


Marble Candy

by dnawhite76, Prubbs



Series: Heart to Tell [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Nightwing (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, POV Alternating, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-04-14 15:23:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dnawhite76/pseuds/dnawhite76, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prubbs/pseuds/Prubbs
Summary: The sequel to Streetlights Talk, this fic picks up in a world post Dick Grayson- in the life that Bruce and the boys are forced to continue after the explosion. Tim and Damian continue to search for Jason Todd so that they can bring him to justice for what he did to their family. And even though Bruce has started to pull away from the search- he cannot help but be sucked back in when they have a run in with Jason’s new partner, who moves in a painfully familiar way, and has questions that only Bruce Wayne can answer.Part 2 of 3.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _“The world's greatest detective and you still haven’t figured it out? Life’s just a game Batman.... And this time, you lose.” - **Jason Todd**_

**CHAPTER ONE**

Everything hurt.

He had hit the table with enough force to hear the legs crack, just enough not to give way, while he desperately tried to suck air into his lungs before the knife came down at him. He winced as the point touched his neck, not exactly cutting him but poking him hard enough to where he was sure it would if he tried to breathe. He grimaced at the man smirking over him, who leaned into his ear. “Dead, ” he muttered. Again. He shoved the man off of him, grimacing as the scarred skin on his right arm tightened in protest. Jason caught it and frowned at him. “I thought this was getting better?” he asked almost disappointed. 

“So did I,” he grunted letting Jay pull him up. “But you keep kicking my ass. I thought  _ you _ said I was good at this?” 

“You are.” Jason shrugged with a grin. “Give yourself a break. It hasn’t even been a full year yet.” 

But it had been. He hadn’t known how long he’d been lying the wreckage before Jason found him, but he did know that he had been hurt more than he had ever thought that he could hurt. And even after Jason pulled him out of the crumbling building- he didn’t think the pain would ever stop. He couldn’t remember what happened. Jason had told him that they had been there together, fighting someone bad, when everything exploded and the building collapsed. He told him that he had pushed Jason out of the way, that he had saved his life by taking the brunt of the blast- but he didn’t remember any of it. When Jason got him out, he took him to a hospital where he had apparently stayed unconscious and broken for months until he finally snapped out of it. That was when the real work had started. Sometimes when he was asleep he would get pieces, a face- a feeling. Like he was both the happiest he had ever been and completely horrified all at once. But mostly he just felt a lot of pain and saw a lot of darkness, but more than anything else, he saw a black mask with pointed ears staring down at him like a monster in a bad dream. 

“Rich,” he jumped when Jason clapped him on the shoulder, but the man just grinned at him. “You aren’t disappearing on me are ya?” 

He shook his head and tried to laugh it off, fighting the sudden need to recoil, “You wish you could get rid of me.” he grinned and snuck a punch at his ribs before he ran off laughing. 

-

He didn’t remember a lot, but he remembered everything up until he didn’t. It was like seeing a bright light before being plunged into darkness. And then he felt like he was mostly drowning. Jason had told him not to think about it too much, and for the most part that wasn’t a problem for Richard. For instance, he knew that he had known Jason before. He had images of him in his memories, of his laughing, of them fighting, hugging, fighting together. That much was there. He could see a few people but not fully. Almost like he had seen a movie about who he was years ago wearing someone else’s glasses. But other things like his name and who his parents were, where he was from and what he had done: all of this was a mystery. He could understand that he was a fighter. His body was built for it and his reflexes said more about that than his memories ever could. But they would have been nice to have. For most of the first year after the explosion he had been restless. Not allowed to get out of bed, forced to lay there and think all of the worst things when the doctors could not tell him who he was or what he was doing there. He'd panic, they would drug him. Jason put an end to that when they finally let him in, he'd told them they were brothers- for all Richard knew, they had been. He certainly felt that way when he was around. 

But Rich hadn't been expecting this. The secrets, the fighting. The masks. He didn't know how he could have ever been one of the masked men he watched on the news or if he could go back after what happened. But Jason was determined. He told Richard that when he was on the move, it was like he was flying. Jason built him a trapeze and sparred with him and pushed him to get stronger. He joked with him. And soothed him when the night terrors took over. And really thinking about it, was helping Jason track down the Batman such a big thing to ask after all the things he had done for Richard?

He lay down on the wire carefully, looking up at the ceiling of the tunnel Jason had found for them underground. It had tall ceilings, and was anything but dirty or smelly like he had assumed it would be when he got here. Mostly it was just cold and dark, and Richard didn't mind the dark that much, at least not until the nightmares started up. Then he turned all the lights on. When Richard was this high up he could almost hear the city, Gotham, coming to life above him. He hadn't ventured out in the city much since he had been well. Only one or two times, when he had enough stubble to cover his face and he thought it was early enough that he wouldn't run into much trouble. Jason insisted on him wearing glasses when he went up. He'd joked about it and said that Rich had been such an idiot before that no one would ever think it could be him if he looked smart for once. Rich had just rolled his eyes and put on the glasses, a tickle of an almost memory, a tall man smiling down at him with half his face covered as he tucked his glasses behind Richard's ears, but it had never come back all the way. None of them did. 

Richard lay on his wire until Jason burst in and he rolled off, dangling until he felt he could fall comfortably on the balls of his feet. Jason was a mess, his suit was disheveled and his mask was already off, mouth bloody and hair sticking up at all ends. He was holding his arm like it might fall off and looking at Rich with a grimace. “You look like shit.” he told him with an eyebrow raised and went to drag him off to the bathroom. 

“We can't all be as pretty as you.” Jason grumbled pulling at his hair that was almost passing up his shoulders now. Rich pulled it up out of his face and sat Jason on the sink, pulling their large first aid kit out from under him. 

“Sorry,” Richard grumbled, “I keep forgetting you are naturally ugly.” He said and poked at Jason's hand until he dropped it. Richard grimaced. “You know I suck at stitches.” 

“Just do it fast.” Jason told him. “I have to go back out.” 

Richard shook his head. “You'll pass out before you hit the light.” He said and yanked his sleeve up, “You need to sleep and eat a steak or something.”  

“I dropped something back at the museum.” He insisted. 

“Did they see you drop it?” he asked. 

“No.” 

“Then I'll grab it in the morning.” There was no more arguing. 

-

The city was cold again when Richard surfaced in the first manhole exit on Wood Grove, the road that had been under construction since he had come out of his coma and probably even before that. He was glad to have the excuse to cover himself, a jacket, a scarf and even gloves kept the world from seeing just how badly he had been burned in the explosion, and if there was one thing Richard hated it was being stared at.  He took a minute to right himself, tugging his writer's bag into place and adjusting his glasses before he ducked into a group of people walking by. It was so easy to be anonymous in the city. No one had the time or energy to ask questions and it made things so much more simple just to fall in with the crowd. 

He walked past three coffee shops and the town hall before he reached the Wayne Enterprises building and took a left. The museum was just a few blocks down, and by the looks of it when he got there not very busy for a Sunday morning. He slipped into the alley easily without being noticed and walked to the back looking up at the rooftops curiously. There was something there, he could almost feel the tickle of something in the back of his mind, but he didn't have time to explore it. 

He looked quickly to the mouth of the alley and then started his search, brushing trash aside and sifting through the grass. He found Jason's mask lying at the corner and grabbed it, rolling his eyes. The idiot. How many times did Jason tell him not to take his mask off no matter what? He shoved the mask in his bag but saw something gleaming next to where the mask had been. He picked it up carefully, turning the blade over in his hand. Rusty blood was caked on it. At least he knew where the cut had come from. But Richard had been in the alley too long now, he shoved the blade in his bag and ducked back onto the street intending to keep walking but slowed at the entrance of the museum. Gotham Museum of Fine Arts. And without really knowing why he was compelled to, he stepped inside.

It was as dead as he thought it would be. Only two or three people walking around on the ground level and a pretty blonde receptionist sitting at the front. She smiled at him when he bought his ticket and told him to enjoy the visit. He just nodded. For some reason he felt that if he spoke in here something bad would happen. 

He slowly made made his way through the ground level, reading the signs and and watching the few people around him look at things too. Watching them was almost better than looking at the actual art. He liked to see it click on their faces when they found what they were looking for. After about an hour on the first floor, he headed upstairs taking a left at the fork to what was labeled, “The Grayson Memorial Wing.” His heart stopped when he stepped in. He didn't know why, but he suddenly got the feeling that there was something very wrong with this building. Something horrible was about to happen, and he was just tempting fate by being there. He was about to turn around and walk back out of the building when a painting caught his eye. It was a simple painting, the cityscape in splashes of yellow, green and red. He walked over to it. 

He wasn't sure just how long he had stood there, but after what felt like ten minutes, the feeling of unease returned. He turned around to see a young man staring at him with electric blue eyes under a mop of well cut black hair. Richard stared back at him, knitting his brow together when he didn't look away. “Hi.” He offered and when the young man didn't say anything back he said, “Excuse me,” and brushed past him towards the door. 

 

\---

 

He stared at the ceiling. The smooth swipes of the texture brush blended into shapes he didn't bother identifying. He'd stared at that ceiling for 5 minutes every morning for the last 572 days. He'd tried to stop keeping count at 8 months 2 weeks and 5 days, but the first thought each morning was adding that extra day. There were times when all he remembered of the day was scratching that mental tally into the wall like a castaway on an island. 

He gave himself just five minutes to miss _Him_ before getting up for the day. Sometimes those five minutes were memories full of laughter and joy. Sometimes they were anger and arguments. Sometimes, when the night before had been particularly hard, he'd think of wind chapped lips touching his. He'd think of his failures, of chances not taken, of words not spoken. Most of the time he imagined a life that could have been. If he'd saved Jason. If he'd told _Him_ sooner. If he had been a better person. 

The last thing Bruce did each time his five minutes ran out was close his eyes imagine pressing his forehead against _His_ and think those three words. 

He opened his eyes and let out a breath before rolling out of bed. 

Tim was already at the breakfast table, laptop open next to his bowl of Super-O’s. He ate with one hand and typed with the other. “No work at the table,” Bruce said as he sat down. Alfred set a plate of pancakes in front of him. He didn't know how the man knew, but he always managed to make the breakfast he craved the most. Tim grumbled and scrambled to finish what he was typing before putting his computer away. 

“Where's Damian?” 

Tim hummed through his mouthful of cereal. 

“Master Damian took Titus on a run,” Alfred supplied as Tim swallowed. 

“He had another nightmare,” Tim said softly. When they'd first gotten back to the manor Tim had grabbed all of his stuff and moved it into a spare bedroom next to Damian's. He'd been in _His_ original room and had used that as the reason for the move, but it became apparent that he wanted to be closer to his only remaining brother. Less than a month after the funeral Damian started having nightmares. He'd woken himself from most of them, and unable to fall back asleep had focused on training or working a case. There were a few that had driven him to check on his family. More than once he'd woken to Damian standing by his door staring through the darkness with eyes shining and far too young for what he'd seen. 

“Your fall last night?” Tim shrugged. It had been almost 4 months since Damian last had one. At least one bad enough to keep him up. According to Tim, they’d started when the boys had been with Jason. Damian had woken him up screaming into the dark of their cell the day after he'd been captured. Damian never talked about them. He simply told them he'd had another. 

“Probably. He woke me up, we watched some Wendy episodes.” He'd keep an eye on him tonight, not that he didn't already watch out for the boys every night. 

“Father! Are those my pancakes?” He shoved the last forkful in his mouth as Damian yanked the plate away. 

“I saved you a plate,” Alfred said, cutting short the rant from the youngest Wayne. 

Tim's empty bowl went to the sink and the laptop came back out. Bruce never knew what Tim was working on. There were times where he'd carry an entire conversation about a case while typing, but the screen held Wayne Enterprises reports. “Superboy is coming over later. I just wanted to let you know.” 

“How are things with the Titans?” Bruce asked with a nod while pushing Damian’s elbows off the table. The Titans were a sore subject. They always had been if he was being honest with himself, even when _He_ had run the team, maybe especially then. Now the issue was different. He'd urged Tim to keep his life the same. That they were fine, but Tim had been adamant about staying in Gotham. They'd argued, but Tim had refused to give in. He stayed. This meant the teens visited more often. He'd come back from the office to laughter floating down the stairs. It hurt worse than he wanted to admit. After a few times Tim started to warn him if they were coming over. Eventually only Connor came over. 

“They're fine. Connor is just being paranoid. He wants to go over the mission details with me in person. Like it makes a difference.” 

“Kents.” he scoffed. 

“Oh he's going to hate that.” Tim started typing with a grin splitting his face. 

“Mister Kent is on the phone.” Alfred said a second later. Damian mumbled something about aliens as he headed downstairs to take the call. Clark called his cell unless it was League business. 

“Were your ears burning?” he asked as he sat down. Clark just blinked at him, face grim. It was a more common occurrence lately. 

“You missed the meeting.” 

“Tim landed bad yesterday. We had a late night.” Clark visibly relaxed. Bruce knew Clark wasn't happy with his decision, he'd tried to change his mind almost every time they talked. He hadn't realized just how much it was affecting the man until that moment though. But he couldn't change his mind. 

On day 497 he'd woken up in a hospital on an alien planet after getting shot with another energy gun. They had been helping a race shore up their defenses. He'd been going over the latest tests on their existing shield when someone had yelled look out and he'd been caught by a stray blast from the training area. It had taken 10 days for him to regain feeling in his extremities and the alien doctors to release him. He half expected to hear Tim's voice over the intercom as they made their way back to Earth. When he'd landed in the cave and looked at his boys, he'd decided at that moment that he had done all he could with the league. Tim looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. Damian was tense and on edge, snapping at Alfred when the man had simply offered him a chair. 

Bruce had given Clark until the next League induction. Everyone would have to vote on his replacement anyway. It was easier to transition at one time. 

Diana was the only other person on the league that knew of his decision. She'd stopped by a few weeks after he'd told them. He had expected her to try and talk him out of it. Instead she talked about The Wing. She had taken over the decision process when he'd frozen and stared at the print out for the Robin piece. She told him about the different pieces and the reception The Wing had received. “You'll always be my friend. And I will always be there for you. Do not forget that.” She'd said kissing his cheek softly when he had finally walked her to the door. That felt like ages ago. 

“What did I miss?” Bruce asked. Clark filled him in, explaining things more thoroughly than he probably needed to, just to keep him on the line. He let Clark talk until the man himself had cocked his head slightly and told him he had to go. He signed off with a quiet stay safe. Clark nodded, a strange look crossing his face before the screen went blank. 

-

“I'm not sure. If I was do you think I'd be asking you to look into it?” Tim sounded angry. He lowered his hand.

“Why don't you and the Demon Brat look into it?” Connor’s voice was tense. Like he was holding back his own frustration. 

“We are already- no nevermind. We'll do this on our own.” He could hear the tone change. Tim's switch from teenager to vigilante. 

“Tim.” He could practically see the blue eyes widening pleading for forgiveness. “We'll look into it. Okay? Just don't get your hopes up.” 

“Believe me. No hope here.” 

Bruce stepped away from the door and headed back downstairs. He knew the Robins were working on their own cases. He'd find them going over scattered reports and crime scene photos at least once a week. They never let him see what they were working on. Damian often speaking up. ‘ _Father we wish to complete this on our own_.’ He hadn't thought they were doing anything that they would need outside help on. 

 

\---

 

_ Bang. Bang. Bang.  _

Richard grimaced and left the gun where he had been huddled on the ground. His target was hanging just barely touched in the trees about five hundred yards away. If he had had a real target they would be far out of range by now. He sat up and rubbed his palms into his eyes. They had been at this for hours and he could feel Jason growing less and less patient with him. “For fucks sake Bird, it’s like you aren’t even trying.” he growled looking at the barely touched target through his scope. He picked up the gun and sunk three shots into the paper head quickly and easily as Rich stared sullenly at the grass. “Do you even want to hit the target?” he demanded squatting next to him. “What if it were me out there and my ass was on the line?” 

“Then I should be out  _ there _ with you!” he told him pointing to where the target was. “So I’m no good with guns- I have the cuffs. I’m a good fighter, if you need the back up let me be-”

“No.” Jason cut in. They had had this argument a hundred times and he knew exactly where and how this would end. “You know that we can’t do that. The last time you were out there with me you were almost killed.” he lowered his voice when he realized that he was shouting and softened, at least as much as Jason could. “Do I need to remind you how that ended?” he asked pulling at the scarf around Richard’s neck where he had covered the worst of his scars. 

Rich swatted his hand away and fixed him with a tired stare. “Are you my boss or my partner?” he asked. 

Jason rolled his eyes, “I’m your brother.” he told him, pushing the gun back into his hand. “Now actually try this time. _Please_.” he added knowing that Rich would bark at him if he didn’t. 

He got back on the ground and aimed at the target firing off three fast and easy shots right into the targets chest and then he shoved himself off of the ground. “I don’t like guns.” he told Jason, handing the rifle over to him and crossing his arms. “I’m not going to kill anyone.” 

“Even if they are bad people?” he asked coldly. Richard stared him down and Jason turned shaking his head. “Let’s get back home before anyone sees you.” They didn’t talk the entire way back. 

-

He woke up to the sound of the power surging, lights flickering in and out and making the entire tunnel flash pitch black for a full minute. And without really knowing why, panic sucked the air out of him and he fell out of bed gripping for the wall to force himself to stand. It was gone as soon as the lights came back up and then he was out of his room and wandering through the halls. “Jay?” he called and got a small return from the little cove of a kitchen in the corner. 

He was at the table leaning over a mess of intricate wires in small casings. “Sorry ‘bout the light.” was all he said as a form of greeting. 

Richard was too tired and worked up from the panic to be an ass about it. “That was you?” he demanded. 

He nodded. “I’m done now.” he told him and held up one of the tiny casings for Rich to examine. “I put the tasers from your bracers into these.” he grinned and slapped the bullet into the pistol he had on the table and without saying a word shot it into the wall. The lights flickered again Richard’s heart hammered hard, shutting his eyes until the lights and the world steadied all together. “See?” Jason asked elated. “No killing, just stunning.” He said and then he really seemed to noticed Rich. “You okay?” he asked. 

Richard nodded and sat across from him heavily. “Yeah.” he told him as steadily as he could.    


“Good.” Jason nodded brushing the spare wires off of a file that lay heavy on the table. “Cause I thought we might take these out for a test run.”

He took the folder with a steadying hand and flopped it open. He read the cover a few times and looked confused back at Jason who was still messing with the bullets. “What do we need at Wayne Enterprises?” He asked dubiously. WE was just a business run by just another rich crazy dude trying to make the world better by doing a bunch of boring stuff that Rich didn’t really care about. 

“They have something that I think you might want.” Jason told him. 

“Which is?” 

He set his mouth in a hard line. “A file. About your family. What happened to them.” A flash of bright color flashed with a scream just barely too far back in his mind for him to grasp. What happened to his parents was horrible. He didn’t know what it was but he knew that much. He remembered blood and he remembered crying so hard that he wasn’t sure he would ever breathe right again. And then his parents were just gone and he was… Where had he gone? What had happened to him when his parents weren’t there anymore? His chest throbbed with some forgotten memory. Jason was watching him carefully. “You do want that, don’t you?” he asked softly. 

Richard cleared his throat. “Yeah.” he told him after a minute. “Let’s go.” 

-

He was propped up on the rooftop opposite of the Wayne building staring at the glass walls of the office space that were crystal clear with the sun down. He tightened his scope and focused on Jason who was walking so casually through the building space in his hood with his rifles that it was almost comical. You would think that he worked there. Rich tapped his com and smirked. “Try not to have so much fun.” he told him, “You are making me jealous over here.” 

“I should have let you go through the building.” he sighed back. “I was expecting a little more resistance. I have to say I’m disapoin-” Jason stopped in the middle of his sentence and Richard watched as he spun around and ducked into an open door. “Spoke too soon.” he whispered. 

“What is it?” Rich asked watching a dark figure move fast across the window and vanish. He waited for a minute listening to the silence before he asked again. “Jay, what is it?” 

“Get out of here, Bird.” he told him instead of answering. “Go back to the tunnel and I’ll meet you there.” 

“Hell no.” he growled out watching through the scope as he snuck out of the room and sprinted back towards the service hallway where he disappeared. “I can’t see you.” he told him but he could see the shadow. It was moving too fast for him to get a good shot but he tried anyway, just barely snagging the tail of the cape before it disappeared too. “Jay it’s right behind you.” 

“What a coincidence.” Richard spun around and saw that he wasn’t the only one sent for backup. But the masks in front of him were just kids. Kids in capes and tights staring him down like they thought that this was going to be the worst night of his life. 

He hesitated but kicked the rifle to the side. They were close range so it was pretty much useless at this point and he wasn’t about to shoot a kid even if it was just a taser. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” he asked. 

The smaller one growled while the other said, “Cute,” in a really tired kind of way. He was almost offended for a minute but then realized that was stupid. “Wanna make this easier and just come with us?” the older one asked. 

“Not really.” Rich shrugged. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good fight.” 

“Good.” said the small one, “I was getting bored.” Then he flew at him. Well ran, but he was so fast that it seemed like he was flying. Rich just barely moved out of the way when a blade came crashing into the concrete so hard next to him that it cracked. Well shit. He raised the sword at him again and Rich grabbed his rifle using it to block the blow and twist the kids arms down, kicking him square in the chest. He flew back but he wasn’t down for long. He charged at him again but this time the other kid was right behind him. He dodged the sword but took a hard hit to the side with the staff and just barely managed the avoid a foot sweep by flipping out of the tangle. 

The kids blinked at him in surprise and for a second they forgot to attack him. That was all he needed. “Sorry kids.” he grimaced under his mask and clicked his bracers together, electricity running from forearm to fingertip. “But I don’t have time to mess around.” And then he charged them. They reacted too slow. The little one managed to parry the first blow but Rich caught the blade of his sword and the current ran straight down to him. He turned to the older kid so that he didn’t have to watch him twitch. He held out his pole ready to fight but before he even had a chance, Jason hit him hard on the back of the head and he hit the ground. 

“Let’s go now.” he spat out and they rushed out of there before the kids had a chance to get back up or the shadow could find them. 

 

\---

 

“What did he get?” Tim asked. He was in a pair of lounge pants and a long sleeve shirt, it was a stark contrast with the cave spreading out behind him. He lifted the ice pack he was holding to the back of his head winced and lowered it back. 

“I don't think he got anything.” Bruce had gone through the footage and through all the security systems, but couldn't find any evidence that Jason had even been there. If he hadn't seen him with his own eyes he would have thought Barbara was wrong. 

“Jason doesn't do things randomly. He had to have gotten something.” Tim looked like he wanted to go through the footage on his own. To check his work. It was happening more often and Bruce thought it would irritate him, but it didn't. He moved over so Tim could control the computer.  “It has been a while since we last saw him. Perhaps he just wanted to stir up some trouble.” Tim hummed.

He doubted it, but it had been nearly 3 months since they had last had a run in with him. The scar on his thigh from the bullet he'd been greeted with was still pink. “You found his partner?”

Tim paused and his eyes flicked to him. “Yeah. More like hired grunt.” Tim's words were dismissive, but his voice was too disgruntled to sell it. Damian wasn't easy to defeat, but he'd landed on the rooftop and the boy had been curled into a twitching ball. Tim sprawled out a few feet away. “I think Deathstroke might have produced another apprentice. He seemed familiar.” Tim adjusted the ice pack and set to typing. 

“You should get some rest. Alfred will be up to check on you in a few hours and you know how he gets when the bed is empty.” Tim finished his report and grumbled but headed upstairs.

Bruce waited until the door clicked shut and the sensors had completed their sweep before heading over to his uniform stand. He lifted the edge of the cape and looked at the bullet lodged in the Kevlar. He pulled the cape off and headed to the examination room. He'd never seen a bullet like that. It looked too complex to be a normal round. He moved to pull it out but a arc of electricity jumped to his fingertips. A memory of a high surprised laugh and a giggling dance flashed before him. He grabbed a pair of gloves and pulled the bullet free. He could see Jason's work on the bullet, but the device causing  electrical charge was different. Jason had melded the device into the bullet. This wasn't something you gave a hired grunt. Tim might be right about him having been an apprentice, but he was definitely Jason's partner now. Bruce removed Jason's work and looked at the device. He'd upload it to the Tower and see if they'd seen anything like it. He pressed the device between his fingers, it crackled and sparked blue lightning encircling his hand before it died out. The scanner beeped and he headed back to the computer to upload the readings. They couldn't be correct. The device only gave out 15mA. Jason had made a non-lethal bullet. It didn't make sense. 

-

“We've gotten a great response. If you're open to it I'd like to shift a few pieces around. No I know. Robin is the cornerstone of the wing. I'd never move it.” Her eyes were too soft as she spoke. He wasn't used to seeing her compassionate side so focused on him. 

“Okay. Do what you think is best.” He signed the contract she offered him. 

“Are you coming to the meeting tomorrow?” She asked like she didn't mind either way, but wanted to be prepared. He looked at the WE contracts in front of him. Seeing his hesitation she started talking. “Wally has been very helpful,” she hesitated over the last word like she wasn't sure what to call it. “He has been trying, but I think if he relaxed he would be doing better. He's so worried about living up to the name.” He nodded along. He'd seen some of the footage of fights he'd missed. “You helped Kon. I thought you might talk to him.” Bruce wasn't sure when he became the go to person for advice. He'd talked to Kon because he'd seen first hand how affected he was, and because Tim had asked him to. This wasn't that. 

“Shayera told us yesterday about a new hero in Japan. He fights a vegetable man. She wants to assist him in his quest for dragon eggs.” 

He raised his eyebrow at vegetable man but didn't say anything as she continued her stories of the league. 

“Kal has been vexing lately,” she said with a small smile. 

“When is he not?” Bruce asked with his own smile. She gestured as if to say touché. “What is he doing now?” 

Diana complained about the man of steel for the rest of the hour. They had always vented to each other. Clark did the same. He'd miss them the most. While he didn't doubt Diana's vow to be there for him he doubted they'd have the time. Clark refused to replace his leadership meaning Diana and Clark would each pick up extra responsibilities. 

“How have you been?” Diana asked. He knew she'd wanted to ask from the moment she'd sat down at his desk. 

“I'm okay,”he answered honestly. There were days when he wasn't okay. But today wasn't one of those days, he woken with happy memories. “Jason broke into WE last night.” 

“What?! I don't understand why you will not let Kal and I help you with this.” She'd offered to hunt Jason down a few days after the funeral. There were promises of violence and pain, but this wasn't something they could help on. 

“This is something the family must handle.” He'd explained that to her then, and he could see the anger he'd seen at that moment flare now. 

“That monster is not your family. He would not have threatened his brothers if he was.”

“Diana please. I was having a good day. Can we not fight?” She stared at him, eyes alight with her anger before she nodded and stood. 

“I should be going. Will I see you tomorrow?” He nodded and walked her out. She gave him a fierce hug. “Call us if you need us.” she reminded him as she slid into her car. 

-

He couldn't believe he'd missed it. The files weren't part of the WE mainframe. So the algorithm hadn't looked for them, but he knew what was missing. He'd moved the files from the Cave to the office years ago, but had never documented their move. He wasn't sure how Jason had even know where to look. The Graysons’ file was the only thing missing. It housed the autopsy reports, crime scene photos and a history of every person working at Haly’s during the event. He'd uncovered more than he'd meant to and had chosen not to pursue it. This was not good. 

-

Tim and Damian were working their own case. Bruce went on his normal patrol route. He varied it up at a few key intersections before circling back to his perch over the museum. He hadn't come in 47 days, but Diana had brought the thought back to him. He had used to stand and watch _Him_ through the windows when he was working late. Watching to make sure he was safe, to see him happy. Now he looked through the windows and let his eyes find the Robin painting. It's reds and yellows swirled together until that's all he could see. 

He heard the footsteps creaking in the gravel of the roof and leaned back hiding further in the shadows. 

“I dropped Timmy boy from this height. Honestly, I was surprised Dickiebird caught him. Expected to hear a splat.” He watched Jason walk on the ledge of the building. He was watching him right back. “Didn't scream though. That was disappointing. Your son however. Howled and howled. I don't know how you put up with it. I could take care of it for you if you want.” the street lights glinted off of the pistols he carried. 

“Are you ready?” 

-

Bruce limped through the cave, knee swollen and back aching. He had a knife wound running up the inside of his wrist and a bite mark on his hand. That had surprised him, the knife not so much. The bite had caught him off guard and Jason had taken the opportunity to shove him over the ledge. The line he'd barely gotten out caught at the last moment and he'd landed in a heap. Jason had yelled down, holding his ribs and spitting out blood, “You didn't go splat either. I'll have to keep trying.”

 

\---

 

The Flying Graysons. Rich had known his parents were circus people, but they had never had a name before. The headlines were horrible but the pictures were so much worse. There limbs contorted where they had fallen off the cut ropes, eyes staring at nothing in shining leotards that were supposed to make them a spectacle in a very different way. And then there were pictures of him. The one that had been printed in the paper was taken right after the tragedy, him staring down horrified and hanging from the high wire, his entire life literally turned upside down. They had called him Dick. But that was where the file ended. It didn’t say what had happened to him after only that it had happened. 

Richard hated that he didn’t feel more about this. More about seeing his parents photographed dead bodies for, all intents and purposes, the first time. But all the file had done, laid out before him, was give him a last name. The same name that was on the plaque at the Gotham Museum of Art. 

He took his time getting dressed, pulling his hair messily out of his face and wrapping his scarf a little higher than he usually would to make sure that the burn that ran up behind his right ear was covered. He didn’t bother with the glasses, grabbing his sunglasses on the way out instead. He knew the way to the museum. He had taken it so fast last time that he hadn’t had a chance to stop and look at the city around him. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to look at much of anything, but his heart was pounding and he needed a minute. There was a scaffolding at the top of Wayne Enterprises, replacing the office window that he had broken a few nights before. He stopped and watched them for a minute and he had to wonder why Bruce Wayne would have had a file about his parent’s deaths hidden so deeply in his mainframe. Did he know him, or his parents? Had they been friends? He had meant to ask Jason when they got back from the mission but Jason had been so mad about his fight that he didn’t bother.  

He pushed on, head filled with nothing but questions and knowing that if he made it to the museum that maybe one of them would be answered. He was completely convinced that he had been ready for those answers until he stepped into the building and saw it busy and filled with men in suits. He kept his head down and made his way over to the reception area. “Is the museum closed for some kind of event today?” he asked the pretty blonde at the computer. 

She smiled sweetly and shook her head. “Oh don’t mind them.” she told him with a little wave of her hand. “They’re just here to look at the art installation in the New Memorial wing.” she handed him a pamphlet and pointed up the stairs. “You should take a look there are some beautiful pieces there.” 

“I will, thank you.” he told her and pushed his way through the crowd to the stairs. All of the pieces were the same but it had been moved around. The city piece, though was still at the center. Rich waited against the wall towards the back watching as people walked by and muttered about liking or hating what they were seeing. There weren’t a whole lot of people in this wing, but he guessed that it was because they hadn’t had an official opening yet. They would want to throw a party and a fundraiser and of course they would want a front page shot with… how did he know that? He sat on the bench that was in front of the city piece next to a kid with dark hair who was reading a book and looking highly uninterested in being there. He tried to keep his breath steady but he could feel a frustration and panic threatening to consume him. He pushed up his sunglasses and focused on the painting until a couple stepped in the way, speaking just loud enough for him to hear and send him back into that panic spiral. 

“Dick hated this painting.” The boy said. The same mop haired boy that he had seen the last time he had been here. His stomach bottomed out at hearing his name, the headline name, come out of his mouth. He made a point to look past him to the painting but he kept listening. 

“I thought he would have like it.” Said the woman next to him with a curious accent. She was easily the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, all curves and dark hair with features that were so sharp they could cut you. “It’s him.” she said as though it was obvious. 

The boy shrugged. “He was mad that Bruce butted in to get it here. He might have liked it other than that, but it was always a sore subject.” 

As if that triggered something, the woman put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for coming. I know that he couldn’t, but one of you needed to see this before the gala.” 

He just nodded and took one last look at the painting before he turned to the bench. Richard pretended to get a phone call and started towards the exit as he heard the mop haired boy call to the boy he had been sitting next to that they needed to leave. 

Rich walked quickly but stopped at the reception desk one more time before he made it out of the building. “Leaving already?” she asked sweetly and he put on his most charming smile. 

“I have an appointment unfortunately. But I was wondering about the memorial wing?” Richard asked even though he had already been up there. “Did an artist die? Someone local?” 

The blonde turned her eyes down and shook her head again. “No one famous.” she told him sadly. “It’s for Dick Grayson, he used to be the curator here. Kind of a socialite.” 

Richard's heart thudded hard in his throat. “I’ve never heard of him.” he said after a hard swallow. 

Luckily she didn’t seem to notice. “You must not be from here. He’s the ward of Bruce Wayne. Of Wayne Enterprises? The tower about five blocks over?” Richard nodded and she smiled sadly, “Anyway he passed away two years ago next week. In a building collapse. It’s so tragic.” 

He swallowed again and looked at the men standing next to the desk but didn’t pay the slightest attention to them even though they were discussing and making decisions essentially about him. And then he looked back at the stairs were the dark haired boys were descending just as the older one locked eyes with him. “Thanks for your time.” he told the girl and turned swiftly to the door telling himself that he would not run even as he heard the quickening steps on the echoing floor behind him. 

“Wait!” The boy yelled but Richard had reached the door. He pulled his sunglasses back down and ducked into the alley. There were no scaffoldings here and he was very much at a dead end. 

“Shit.” he grumbled hearing the museum door open and shut hard, footsteps hammering towards him. He didn’t have a choice. He had to go up. He backed up giving himself just enough room to get a running start and flung himself at the left wall of the gap, pushing hard over the the next and back when the kids turned the corner.  They hesitated long enough for him to get to the top and roll over the edge panting. He walked to the other end of the roof looking for the closest ledge when he felt his legs bind together before he fell hard. 

“I said _wait_.” The older boy said, his feet stopping just in front of him. He pushed him over with the heel of his shoe and leaned over and yanked off his sunglasses, the anger he felt falling completely off his face as he looked down at him. “Dick?” he asked as the small one caught up, running so hard that he practically ran into the other boy who was just able to stay up and then he was looking down at him too. 

And it was too much to handle. Richard had to get out of there. He shoved up with all his strength sweeping their feet with his tied legs and yanking the knife he had pocketed free to cut himself loose. “Sorry,” he said not knowing why he was apologizing to them and then he was sprinting. He could hear them follow him but he was over the side of the building and flipping to the next before the could follow. He waited until he was at the heart of the city to come down, taking only a second to catch his breath before he stepped into the crowd, pulling his scarf up higher. His head was reeling with adrenaline and new information, but only one thing had become completely clear. Jason had taken something out of that file before he gave it to him. There was no way that his almost adoptive father would not have had a digital record of the process- and the only way he was going to get that information would be to confront Bruce Wayne. 

-

Jason was back by the time he got home, brushing his teeth and spitting out red. He had a nice row of new bruises across his left side. “How was the dentist?” He joked and Jason rolled his eyes at him, rinsing his mouth out and grabbing the ice pack he had left sitting on the sink. 

“Great.” Was all he said, as usually not providing any information that was not asked of him. “Big day out?” he asked, eyes glinting with what was supposed to be curiosity but he could see suspicion underneath. 

“Yeah, I went to the library.” He lied easily going for disappointed. “Went through the old archived newspapers trying to find anything else about ‘The Flying Graysons.’” He said giving the name finger quotes and sank onto the edge of the tub. 

“Find anything interesting?” he asked trying to sound like he was just being polite, but Rich could tell that there was a real interest there. An interest that he wasn’t entirely sure that he trusted. 

And he thought about telling him the truth, at least for a minute. He thought about all of the good things Jason had done for him, things he did not have to do- rehabilitating him and risking his life to get information about him… information he tampered with. “No,” he sighed, not having to fake his disappointment. “Turns out, when you die tragically in Gotham they don’t really like to dwell on it.” 

Jason nodded unsurprised and shifted his ice pack. “You want a drink?” he asked heading toward the kitchen. 

“I’m good.” he called back. The last thing that he needed right now was to let his guard down. 

 

\---

 

Tim and Damian were both at the breakfast table when Bruce came down. Tim glanced up but focused on his omelet without a word. Damian was studiously cutting his into minuscule bits. “Do you want to come up to the tower with me today?” They'd both been before, but he didn't know if he'd get the chance to take them again. Tim looked up at him, he gave him half of a smile at the searching look the boy gave him. Tim looked to Damian, they seemed to share a silent conversation. A silent argument if the hiss Damian let out was anything to go by. 

“Father-”

“Sure. When do we leave?” Tim’s voice was too jovial. It belied the tension in his shoulders. He was hiding something. They were hiding something, if the glare Damian shot him was anything to go by. 

“After breakfast.” Alfred had a bemused smile on his face as he placed the plate in front of him. 

He ate his food while Damian and Tim continued their silent debate. Tim seemed to win. Damian crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I'm going to go walk Titus.” 

Bruce watched him leave.  “When we get back you're going to tell me what's going on.” He told Tim when he stood. Tim looked at him for a long moment before nodding. He handed his plate to Alfred and jogged upstairs.

-

They took the jet. Damian arguing the entire way onto the plane that he should be able to fly it. Bruce grinned to himself as they got settled. Tim was staring at him when he looked over after doing the checks. “Go ahead and take us out,” he said after a moment. Damian hesitated for a couple seconds. His eyes widening briefly before he looked almost gleeful as he fired up the engines. 

They managed to get to the Tower without any issues. Damian smugly explained to Tim why he was a better pilot. He watched the boys head for one of the labs. He caught himself worrying about them blowing something up before his mind shut down that line of thought. They knew better. He was sure Tim was researching the bullet. They hadn't yet found a lead, but the more he thought about it the more familiar it seemed. 

“Look who showed up.” Hal said when he walked in the conference room. Half of the league was already there talking amongst themselves, their words dropped when the Lantern had spoken. It had been almost 2 months since he'd attended a meeting, longer since Bruce fought alongside them. He sat down in his normal seat, across from the empty chair he knew would house the Kryptonian in a few minutes. 

“Where have you been?” the man continued. 

“Gotham,” he answered dryly. Where else would he be? He felt the familiar buzz of J’onn’s mind. The manhunter was checking on him, he let him check. He didn't have anything to hide anymore. J’onn withdrew. He watched him, but saw no outer sign of what he'd found. 

“Gotham.” Jordan said it like it was some curse. Bruce gripped the arms of the chair to keep his anger in check. 

“Batman,” Diana said, sounding too surprised for someone who knew that he would be there. Maybe she hadn't believed him. He wasn't sure that he blamed her. He wouldn't have believed himself either. 

“Diana,” he said with a nod. She sat down next to the last empty seat. 

“Okay. So where are we on the Satedan negotiations?” Clark asked as he walked in the room. He hesitated as he sat down in his chair and noticed Bruce. 

“They are improving. Talks should be complete by the end of the week.”

“And the situation in Vancouver?” 

“Resolved.” 

“Okay. Does anyone have anything pressing to bring to the table before we get started?”

Shayera brought up the vegetable man. Halfway through her description Wally started snickering into his hand. He was trying to hide his laughter, but as she continued in a grave voice his laughter grew. “Flash?” Bruce asked, interrupting the woman. Wally froze with his hand still covering his mouth. 

“Mmph?” the speedster asked. 

“What's so funny?” 

Wally’s eyes widened.  “It's an anime. The villain isn't a vegetable.” he giggled and covered his mouth again in horror. Shayera looked appalled and started to defend herself. He pulled up the search and sent it to the monitors. Wally was right. 

The meeting moved on but Bruce watched Wally who was too focused on what everyone was saying. Wally was _His_ age. He could almost imagine him sitting next to the speedster joking about dragon eggs and vegetable men. If he hadn't pushed _Him_ away all those years ago, if he hadn't let Jason die, if he'd saved them both, if he'd died instead. “Bruce?” 

He jerked himself out of the spiral. Everyone was staring at him. Diana was watching his hands as they shook with knowing eyes. He stood. “Excuse me.” he stalked from the room.  He didn't go far. He wanted to talk to Wally. Diana had asked, it was the least he could do. “Wally?” he called when he saw the younger man walk by. 

“I'm really sorry. She was just so serious.”

“That's not what I wanted to discuss with you.” Wally relaxed a bit. “Who is Superman?” 

“Clark.” 

“And Wonder Woman?”

“Diana.”

“Hawkgirl?”

“Shayera.”

“And the Flash?” 

“Me?”

“You.” Bruce pointed to the symbol on his chest. “Barry chose you. He chose you because you're your own man. We don't need another Barry. We need you.” Wally’s eyes were wide as he stared at the lightning bolt on his chest. “Today proves that don't you think?” Wally looked too surprised, he didn't know why someone hadn't said something sooner. “Stop second guessing yourself. You know what you're doing.” He took a step closer, using the darkness of space behind him as he looked down on the speedster. “And if I ever see you hesitate over saving a civilian or a teammate again I will break your legs myself.” his voice came out like gravel. Wally gulped audibly and nodded. “Go talk to Diana.” The man sped away causing his cape to rustle. 

“That's why we need you.” Clark said as Wally rushed past him. 

“Morale has never been my strong suit. Definitely not now. I've made my decision. I'm not changing it.” he started for the lab. He'd done what was asked of him. Clark followed, blessedly silent. He walked in the lab to Damian laughing and Tim sprawled out on the floor. 

“He just shocked himself. _‘I know what I'm doing Dami_ ’” The boy mocked his older brother as he helped pull him up off the floor. “I told him not to connect the wires. He didn't listen.” Tim woke up a few seconds later. “I told you it was unpleasant.” 

Tim pushed at Damian’s face. “You're doing it next time then if you know so much.” He checked the device, Tim was recreating it.

“Neither one of you are doing it again. What were you trying to accomplish?” 

“I wanted to see if how it was built gave us any clues to who made it.” 

“Jason made it.” Tim dropped the tongs he was holding. “At least he made the bullet itself. The device was not meant for this.” 

Tim and Damian leaned over the table where the device sat. “Looks familiar,” Tim mumbled. He nodded. The more he looked at it the more he recognized it, but he couldn't remember where he saw it. “Lucius,” Tim hissed. It all slotted into place. Lucius had made a prototype taser round for the Gotham PD. The cost was too high and so the project had been scrapped, but a few of the clips still existed in the depths of R&D. 

“We would have heard if they had been taken.” 

“Look into all of the break ins. See if anything looks suspicious.” 

“All of the break ins?” Clark chimed in. All three of them turned and looked at the man, who took a step back. “Yeah. Forget I asked. I'll talk to you later, Bruce.” He waved him off. 

“How far back?” Tim asked as they packed up the device. 

“5 years just to be safe. I have a few things to do today, let me know if you get anything.” Tim nodded and handed the case to Damian.

“We'll keep you updated.” 

Damian started the checks as they got settled. He followed along, double checking the information flashing across the screen. 

-

Alfred chuckled at him as he climbed out of the town car. “Did you do your tie in the dark?” Bruce straightened the tie half-heartedly, but Alfred quickly redid it. He hadn't had to do that for him in almost three decades. He'd been distracted as he got ready. He wanted to be in the cave with the boys, but Bruce Wayne had two meetings and a board meeting that he could not miss. He ran a hand through his hair on his way into the coffee shop. The barista smiled at him as he ordered his coffee, a large cold brew. It was an oddly warm day. He gave her his name and she hesitated, eyes flicking to the window where WE stood across the street. He smiled at her magnanimously as she wrote his name. The shop was busy so he stood by the counter and flicked through emails on his phone. He looked up when he felt someone watching him. It wasn't an odd occurrence when he was out as himself, but he made a point to pay attention. A man with a scarf wrapped high around his neck was turned toward him, as soon as he looked up though he turned away and kept walking down the street. His heart thudded loudly in his chest. It wasn't possible. 

He'd seen _Him_ too much in the early days. Memories like ghosts filling the empty spaces of the manor. But it wasn't until 8 months after the funeral that he saw _Him_ in Gotham. He was just walking down the street texting. He'd watched him as the car passed, but _He_ was gone when the car slowed for a pedestrian. It had happened a few more times over the months. Bruce knew his brain was just showing him what he wanted to see. He wanted _Him_ to be laughing on the phone as he left a Cafe. He wanted _Him_ to be helping a kid up off the ground. He wanted _Him_ to be alive in Gotham, so he saw _Him_. Sometimes just shaking the hand and meeting blue eyes had his heart stuttering in his chest. They were never the right shade. Never those eyes. 

-

Bruce saw _Him_ almost every morning for the next three days. Mostly out of the corner of his eye as he walked into the coffee shop, or getting out of the car. He scanned his brain again, he didn't think he'd hit his head during his fight with Jason, but he checked anyway. His blood tests were clean. He didn't tell anyone. He had overheard Alfred talking with Clark the morning of the funeral about his mental state. He'd been fine then and there had to be something to explain this now. His mornings were full of _Him_ screaming as he burned. 

Bruce watched for _Him_ as he got his coffee, but didn't catch him lingering just outside his view. He relaxed as he walked through security. Maybe it had just been a bad week. He answered his emails and sent a request to Lucius. Tim hadn't been able to prove that any of the devices had gone missing. They had all been in the inventory after each break in. 

“Mr. Wayne your son is here to see you. Can I send him up?” he replied and wondered which one had left their security card. Tim had never forgotten his card and Damian should be at school. 

“Damian, what did I tell you about skipping classes?” he asked without looking up when the door opened. 

“Bruce Wayne?” 

His heart stopped. He looked up into Those Eyes. 


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

Richard was a coward. It took him a week to even make it into the lobby of WE, and after taking one look around at the stark white modern furniture he stepped right back out. It took another week for him to try again. This time he managed to get to the reception desk but he couldn’t think of a good enough excuse to be there, so he left again. He took to watching Bruce Wayne in the mornings. He would wait in the coffee shop or walk by the building, waiting until he got in the elevator to head back to the tunnels. 

“Where do you keep disappearing to?” Jason asked him the second week. He was standing over him where he had flattened him, again, onto the mat staring straight up. 

He reached out his hand and Jason grabbed it, pulling him back to his feet before they crouched back into position. “What do you mean?” Rich asked ducking a hit to his left and bracing his arms against the knee Jason aimed at his gut. He rolled out of grappling position and popped back to his feet fast as he could, but Jason was already behind him pulling him into a headlock. 

He just barely got his arm up to protect his neck. “You’re going somewhere in the mornings.” Jason panted, stumbling back when Rich managed to break free and trip him by hooking his leg. He took advantage and struck him hard in the chest with his foot. He fell. “Like every morning.” he gasped rolling just in time to miss Richard's foot hitting his face and grabbed it, pulling him down with him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Richard lied easily, grappling with Jason until he finally pinned him down. He pinned his arm tight behind his back. “I’m just tired of being in here all the time.” 

Jason raised his head and grinned wickedly back at him, “Is this everything you dreamed it would be?” he asked implying the position and Rich shoved his face into the matt. 

“No, I thought you’d be wearing something sexier,” Rich told him and pulled Jason’s arm harder until he tapped out. 

But he kept going out. At the same time every morning. The exact time that he knew that Bruce Wayne would be heading into work. Sometimes he wasn’t there and Richard was wrecked with a disappointment that he could not explain to himself. But that disappointment only deepened his need to see him. He needed answers about his life. He needed to know what Jason was keeping from him, and Bruce Wayne had answers. 

He allowed himself one minute. One minute to stand outside of the front doors of the WE building and think about everything that could possibly go wrong. Maybe Bruce Wayne wouldn’t want to see him. He had been _‘dead’_ for two years after all, maybe if he just showed up saying that he was his son then he wouldn’t believe him. And if he didn’t believe him he was sure he wouldn’t just let Rich leave, he would want to rectify the action and Rich just wasn’t sure he was up for a fight. Not today, not right now when he was prepared to lay everything out before him. Maybe they hadn’t been that close. But no, that didn’t feel like it was true. If he hadn’t been close with the man then why did he feel so… much when he saw him just walking by everyday for the past three weeks. Why had he been so scared when he thought that he had seen him? Richard pushed all of these thoughts to the side and pulled on his scarf nervously. His minute was up. He walked into the building. 

The secretary looked at him curiously when he told her that he was here to see his father, but she called up anyway and after a moment he was let into a special elevator that lead up to the top floor. He closed his eyes listening to the floors pass. He wondered what he should say and how he should say it. Should he call him dad? No. That felt wrong. He would probably need to explain who he was. He had so many scars, but he was sure that his face would still mostly have been the same, give or take some scrapes and hair. He focused on staying calm as the elevator slowed and took the smallest of moments to steel himself when the doors opened so that he would be prepared for however this played out. 

Bruce Wayne was sitting behind a large dark desk that was completely covered with reports all attentively stacked into neat little piles. He was writing busily on a paper in front of him and didn’t look up as he said, “Damian, what did I tell you about skipping class?” And Richard wasn’t sure if it was the fatherly tone of his voice or just seeing him, but his heart started hammering. At that moment, anything he had planned to tell him slipped out of his mind. 

“Bruce Wayne?” he asked and felt immediately like an idiot. Of course this was Bruce Wayne. This was his office. It was his fucking building for crying out loud. The man stopped writing and looked up at him like he had just heard a ghost, eyes so alarmed and so… full that he wasn’t sure if he should keep talking or not. After a few seconds he decided that he should say something. “I’m not armed.” he got out raising his gloved hands, “I just have some questions,” he said. The thought of his questions brought him back into himself. Wayne kept staring at him with his eyes all full and stabbing him in a painfully unfamiliar, familiar way.  He wasn’t sure what to do so he took a few steps forward, which was enough to cause Wayne to stand up. He stretched his hand out to Bruce, feeling stupid again but also feeling that it was what he was supposed to do, “Um, I’m Richard. Richard Grays-” 

Bruce grabbed his hand hard and yanked him over the desk and through the papers, crushing Richard to him like he was his own missing limb. He held him so hard that he couldn’t move or breath and then he pulled back and took his face in his hands, looking at him so close and hard that he was sure that he could see right through him. 

And then he kissed him. 

Richard’s heart flew into his throat and electricity reared up from his toes to his chest, pulling his stomach out from under him. His mouth was hot and searching, and when he pulled away, Rich stared at him completely forgetting all of the things had come to say. Bruce watched him, confused, as he stepped away from him, needing to give himself some space to think again. 

“I,” he tried to think through the confusion, “I don’t know…” The hurt on Bruce’s face carved a deep line that he couldn’t stand to look at, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember… you,” he finally got out. 

Bruce sank hard into his chair and watched him watch him, emotion sprinting across his face like he was thinking a thousand things at once. “You don’t remember me?” he said finally. Richard shook his head and the man frowned deeply at him. “Then why did you come here?” he asked. 

“I can leave?” Richard offered and Bruce was out of his chair again. 

“No!” Bruce shot out like he was going to block the door, but he stopped when he saw that Richard had tensed up and instead held his hands out. “Don’t, please. I’m sorry it’s just that you died.” 

Richard nodded and offered a shrug, “I’m not dead,” he told him. 

“I can see that.” Bruce deadpanned and for some reason that made Rich relax. 

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the zip drive that had his parent’s reports on it, walking slowly over to place it on the desk, trying to show Bruce that he wasn’t thinking about running off just yet. “My… friend gave me this file that you saved for me. It has a full report of what happened to my parents but nothing after that.” He watched Bruce’s eyes carefully, taking the small ruffle of his brow as a sign of confusion. There had been something else in that file. Something that Jason hadn’t wanted him to see. He continued. “A girl at the museum told me that you adopted me. I thought if anyone would know what happened to me, it would be you.” 

Bruce watched him for a minute, really taking him in. He could tell that he was burning to ask him his own questions, but he managed to hold it back with a well practiced facade. “Did your  _ friend _ tell you what happened to you?” he asked cautiously. 

Dick swallowed hoping that he wouldn’t notice. “Yes.” 

“And you don’t believe him?” Bruce asked, a little smugness hidden there that he only just caught.    


“He is hiding something from me.” Richard told him trying not to sound as defensive as he felt. Even if he didn’t trust him, it was still Jason. Still his brother. Bruce nodded again after he digested that answer, and then exhaustion took over his face. He sat in one of the leather backed chairs that sat in front of his desk and just stared at him. After a brief hesitation Richard sank into the other. “You adopted me?” he finally asked when he just couldn’t bottle it up anymore. “After?” he asked nodding towards the zip drive. 

“Not really.” Bruce told him, still staring, looking over every inch of him. “Your parents died at a gala of mine. My parents died when I was young. I thought you and I would be… a good fit.” He said after reaching for the right words. “But I never adopted you. You were half grown and it wasn’t what you wanted. You were my ward.” 

Richard snorted, “That sounds pretentious.” He smirked and let himself look around the office at all of the knickknacks Bruce had lying around. He didn’t have any photos. He felt more comfortable here than he had expected to be. 

Bruce on the other hand was leaning towards him, his elbows on his knees like he was trying to determine if he was real. “Dick,” he finally said which sent a weird jolt up his spine. It was the first time he had been called that since, well, whenever he disappeared. “Where have you been?” he asked in such a painful voice that he almost apologized. 

“Around,” he said after another swallow. “In the hospital before that. There was a lot of… damage from the blast. Burns. Broken bones.” He pulled at his scarf until it fell into his lap, and the full extent of the intense red and white patches of skin were exposed to his collarbone. Bruce’s entire body tensed. He tried to talk past it. “I was unconscious for most of it.” Dick told him hoping that it was reassuring, yet somehow he was sure that it wasn’t. “I woke up about five months after and most of the operations had already been done.” 

Bruce ran a hand over his mouth. He looked like he would either cry or scream at him any second. He moved to put his scarf back on, but Bruce jumped up and grabbed his wrist gently, putting his other hand on his neck where the worst of it was. 

And then it happened. Heat ran through his face, and the smallest scene played in his mind. He had been younger. He didn’t know how old but he was looking at Bruce with a bullet hole in his shoulder babbling about how he was still alive. Alfred had stitched him up. He let Dick touch it, it let him know that it was real and he was still there. It was gone as soon as it came but it was enough of a shock to find him back out of the chair, knocking it over and against the wall. Bruce was standing with his hands out again, watching him warily, giving him a minute to gather himself. But Dick wasn’t sure he wanted to be there anymore. “I have to go,” he told him abruptly while heading to the elevator but Bruce had beaten him there.

He looked like he was going to tell him that he couldn’t leave again. He also looked like he might kiss him again. So many things bolted across his face that Dick wasn’t sure what he should prepare himself for, but Bruce didn’t kiss him again. “Will you come back?” Was all he asked. And he asked it desperately. As though the entire world could fall apart on his word alone. 

Dick watched him but nodded slowly. “In a few days,” he told him. He needed time to think about this. About what he had seen and the things he had wanted to say. He needed time to figure out why Bruce Wayne would have a gunshot wound that he had to have stitched up in a bathroom. And next time he would write down his questions. 

\---

The doorway stood empty for half an hour before Bruce's brain kicked back on. He'd just held _Him_ in his arms. It had been real. Even in his wildest imaginings he'd never pictured _Him_ surviving the bomb. Jason had saved _Him_. He didn't understand why. Would he have saved the others if he'd chosen a different way? It wouldn't have made a difference. If he went back in time now he still would choose the boys. He would have fought harder, would have insisted on looking for the remains himself, but he would have still chosen to save them. 

He'd been injured though, caught in the fiery blast. He'd suffered alone. He hadn't even known that anyone belonged at his side, that he was missed. He didn't know. He now understood why when he saw Dick throughout Gotham he'd been wearing the scarf each and every time no matter the weather. His fingers had touched _Him_ , had felt him warm beneath his touch.

He was alive. 

He was with Jason.

Bruce got no work done, his mind circling as he adjusted to the shift in his reality. A shift no one would believe. A shift he wasn't ready to tell anyone about. 

The boys were bickering lightheartedly over the computer when he got desk to the cave. Tim had the keyboard and Damian the mouse. Every time Tim started to type Damian clicked off the screen. He watched them, it always amazed him how close they'd become after the funeral. The last two brothers in the family. He stepped out of the shadows which caused Damian to let go of the mouse. Tim snatched it back and went back to typing.

“How was your day Father?” Damian was still in his school uniform. He hated the institution, but he'd gone with no complaints. Bruce should have known that it had been too easy. At least every week he got a report that Damian had skipped a class or spoken out of turn. He knew that phrase meant, he corrected a teacher in front of the entire class. But he went, that was all Bruce asked. Alfred assisted him in additional studies when he got bored. 

“It was fine. How was school?” 

Damian made a tutting noise and flopped back onto one of the rolling chairs. “It was dreadful. The janitor refused to let me use the facilities, so I had to go upstairs and then was reprimanded for ‘wandering’ off.” He threw air quotes up. “But my mathematics teacher gave me a new textbook.” 

Tim was scrolling quickly through the pages on the screen. 

“Lucius answered. He was confused. Said that you had asked him to use the last of them for a private project you'd been working on.” 

“How long ago?” 

Tim hummed. “He didn't say, but it took him a while to find the information so it wasn't this year.” 

“Nightwing’s sticks used the same devices,” Damian spoke. He knew that the boy had been biting his tongue. Neither of them spoke of their brother unless necessary. 

“Ask Lucius for a date,” Bruce said gruffly and headed for the gym. 

“I told you not to say anything,” Tim hissed as he exited the room. He glanced back at them. Damian was grumbling back at the elder boy, but he couldn't hear anymore of their conversation. 

“How long have you known?” Bruce asked the room at large 5 minutes later when he was sure that he could keep calm. 

“An hour? I just got his response.” Tim pointed to the screen, no longer showing the email.

Bruce let out a slow breath. It was the truth. Saying it out loud would not change anything. “Dick is alive. How long have you known?”

Both boys froze. Surprise clear on their faces. Neither reacted strong enough for the more shocking information. They were simply surprised that he knew. 

“Bruce-” 

“Father.” 

Both of them started at the same time. Pleading because they knew they had done wrong. They knew how much it was hurting him and yet they had still kept it from him. He didn't keep secrets from them any longer. They worked cases as a team. They were a family. And they had kept this new reality from him.  “How long?” he asked again. His voice wanted to break, but he refused to let it.

“Three weeks.” Tim admitted. He didn't know why that shocked him as much as it did. He wanted to take a step back, to defend himself against this attack, but he couldn't. 

“This is what you were hiding from me before the meeting.”

Damian stepped forward. He held up his hand to stop him from getting closer. He was barely staying under control. He didn't want to risk lashing out. 

“You were happier. I thought you were finally moving on.” Tim spoke softly, like he was trying to soothe a wounded animal. And maybe he was, he felt too wild, unable to reign in his emotions. “We weren't sure if it was really him. He didn't recognize us. We wanted to know how he was alive before we told you. If it was the pit and he wasn't Dick anymore…” 

Damian looked back at Tim before turning back to him. “Grayson is the Hood’s partner. He's not the same person. You- he-” he could hear what Damian was trying to say. They were trying to save him from the pain they'd faced seeing their brother as a foe. The pain he'd felt in the office when Dick had told him he didn't know him. 

“No more.” he looked at both of them until they nodded. “Dick came to see me at WE. He has no memory. Jason clearly pulled him from the explosion. He has scars,” he waved his hand around his neck. “It wasn't the pit, but doctors that brought him back.” 

“He survived?” Tim breathed, sounding horrified. Bruce had let the GPD search. All he could imagine was pulling Dick from the rubble like he had pulled Jason's broken body from the ashes. He'd been unable to relive it again. He should have. They'd have known to look. They'd have found him. He wouldn't be with Jason now. 

“How did he get in?” Damian asked, sounding suspicious. 

“He walked in the front door. They said my son was coming to see me. I assumed it was one of you.” Damian looked a little sheepish at that. “He had read the file Jason stole so he knew that he had been taken in by Bruce Wayne after his parents died, but that was all he knew.” 

Tim started typing. “He has to have a doctor. If we find them-” 

“No. Right now he believes in Jason. It's all he knows. He needs to come back to us on his own.” 

“But he could kill him!” Damian shouted. 

“He would have left him in the warehouse, ” Tim replied. He agreed. Whatever game Jason was playing they'd let him play… for now. 

“He said he'd come back,” Bruce heard his voice finally waver as he admitted that. 

There was no reason to believe that he would, but he knew Dick. He knew if something didn't make sense he'd pick at it until it did. And Jason was hiding something from him. Dick would find out. He knew that much was going to happen. He would figure out what to do after, when it came time. 

\---

It just didn’t make sense. Dick sat at the corner of the coffee shop scribbling his way through random words while he waited for time to move faster and the line to get smaller. He had been sitting there for at least an hour too long and had had a coffee too many, but he had wanted to leave before Jason could wake up and ask him where he was going, or worse, offer to go with him. He had offered to accompany Dick every time he left the tunnel for a week after his meeting with Bruce- so persistently that he was sure that Jason knew where he had gone until he started to offhandedly ask him about that morning and pull it out of him. It was almost funny watching Jason try and pry it out of him. Rich had never had a secret to himself before and it was… kind of fun. But the round the clock Richard watch was starting the grate on his nerves, he decided that it would be best to wait. 

Bruce walked in like any other Wednesday. He didn’t go to the office on all weekdays and a lot of times those days varied. But he was almost always there on Wednesdays so Rich figured that this was his best bet. He didn’t notice Richard at first, a look of annoyance painting his face as he exchanged a few words with the barista and looked at his watch and then at his phone. Richard watched him quietly, wondering if he should go to him. But he had a feeling that watching him would be enough. 

And he wanted that moment. He had planned to look into Bruce more after their meeting and after his memory. To figure out who Alfred was and why thinking about that name, even without a face attached, made his chest hurt in a way that looking at his own deceased parents had not. He had wanted to look at a great deal of things, check police reports, old newspapers, to see what could have happened where Bruce Wayne had been shot and why Dick had been there, but unfortunately, he couldn’t get away from Jason. So he wrote his questions. And he watched him. 

Bruce was a big man, and not just in a tall kind of way, the width of him was overwhelming with his broad chest and shoulders pulled straight as a board to the sky. He hadn’t noticed just how big he was in his office, but after he went home he thought about it. He thought about it a lot. So much so that he began the compare Jason to him without thinking too much about it. He had been right to know that he didn’t need to get up. Bruce had felt him staring; his eyes flew over to him the second that he stiffened. The barista called his attention and handed him his coffee, but he kept his eyes on Dick the entire time. 

Dick leaned back in his chair, pushing the adjacent one out with the toe of his boot as an offering. He did not approach slowly, but he was careful, everything about him saying that he still wasn’t sure what Dick wanted from him and hell- he didn’t really know what he wanted either. But he did know that he wanted to see him again. And that the small amount of time they were about to have would not be enough. 

“Good morning.” he told Bruce when he got close enough, tilting his head to watch him. 

“Morning,” Bruce grumbled looking confused, like he still didn’t think he was real. He sat anyway, taking a drink of the burning coffee like it would wash him away if it were hot enough. When he didn’t vanish, his eyes gave way to relief. “You came back.” he said. 

Dick nodded a little uneasy, “I told you I would,” he told him and tapped the notebook in front of him. “I have questions.” 

Bruce looked around at the crowded shop, “You want to ask them here?” 

He shrugged, “Loud rooms are one of the best places to have secret conversations,” he told him, and then he grinned, “Don’t ask me where I got that from, I honestly have no idea,” he said tapping his temple and Bruce smiled even though he looked like he didn’t want to. It was brief, but it was big and it sent a thrill down Dick's spine. 

“I told you that,” he told him clearing his throat. “You were fifteen and convinced that everyone in the James Bond movies were idiots.” Dick raised his eyebrow, “It’s a spy movie. They have lots of top secret conversations in bars.” 

He nodded. “I won’t flatter you by calling you wise then.”

Bruce shrugged, “Fair enough.” he told him and then he sighed, “I guess we should just get into it.”

Dick’s heart jumped into his throat and he set his jaw. Right. This is what he came here for. He nodded and opened the book to his neatly bulleted questions, staring down at number one until he could make it come out. 

“You were shot.” he said. 

Bruce blinked at him, “That isn’t a question.” 

“I saw it in your office when you touched me here,” he said sliding a hand over his exposed neck. He had taken the scarf off when he got into the shop, he had been too hot to keep it on and everyone was too wrapped up in what they were doing to care. “I saw you in a bathroom getting stitched up and you let me touch the wound. You…” he hesitated and looked at him nervously, small and confusing flashes hitting him so randomly that he wasn’t sure he should say. 

But Bruce was tuned in like he was watching his favorite show, fully awake now with his coffee sitting forgotten on the table, “It’s okay,” he prompted him eagerly, “Go on.” 

“You let me touch all of your scars?” he asked and Bruce nodded looking both astonished and elated. “Why did I touch your scars?” he asked only having confused himself more. “Were we…” his face heated a little thinking back to the way that he had kissed him the week before and he motioned between them without looking Bruce in the eye. 

He caught on. “No we weren’t.” he told him but the way that he said it didn’t sound that simple, and Dick wasn’t quite sure that he believed him. But he looked uncomfortable so Dick let it slide. “You had to touch the scar to know that it was okay, and that it healed.” he said simply. “It made you feel better.” 

“Do you have a lot of scars?” Dick asked. 

“I do.” he nodded. 

Dick narrowed his gaze and looked down at his neatly pressed suit. “Why?” he asked. 

And Bruce shook his head looking around the shop. “Not here.” 

“Somewhere else though?” he asked too eagerly, his curiosity getting the better of him. 

The man eyed him, tossing the idea back and forward in his mind, “Somewhere else,” he agreed. “The next time.” 

Dick dragged his eyes away from his and looked back down at his list. “Who is Alfred?” 

Bruce’s eyes brightened at that, “What?” 

“Alfred. I know the name but not the face or the… function.” he offered not finding a better word. 

And Bruce smiled again. Not as big this time but it was a small and loving smile that took over his entire being, he relaxed in his chair. “Alfred is my butler, and my friend. You and him were always very close.” That explained the feeling. He touched his chest without thinking about it. “You could come see him.” he offered quietly. Dick met his eyes panicked. What if he went to see this man and he was disappointed that he wasn’t who he used to be? What if this feeling stopped? “Maybe not today,” he said backtracking just a little bit, “But sometime. Nothing would make him happier. You were always his favorite.” he admitted. 

He nodded but didn’t answer and Bruce didn’t ask him to. He went back to the list. “How old am I?” 

He hadn’t expected that one. “You turned 28 in November,” he said creasing his brow. Dick scribbled it down. 

He looked at the next question and hesitated again, now starting to question the setting more than he had before. But nevertheless he persisted, “Do you know,” he paused and made himself look up from the notebook. “Do you know what I am?” he asked. 

Bruce’s phone rang and they both jumped. The tension in the small space they had between them had made the loud room fade but the ring had brought it back in full force. Dick blinked and Bruce cursed silencing it. “You should probably get to work, Bruce Wayne,” he told him pointing to his now cold cup of coffee. “I’ll get you one to go.” 

\---

**BW:**  Spoke with him again.  


Bruce sent a quick text to the boys as he rode the elevator up to his office. He turned his phone off as he walked into his office and saw Luthor fiddling with one of the pens on his desk. 

“I apologize for being late. The line at the coffee shop was horrendous.” He put on a smile for Lex. The man had managed not to try to kill Clark in the last year. The trouble with his business the likely reason unless he was just saving up for some grand plan. Either way he smiled. 

“I'm sure. Your security has improved,” Lex said vaguely waving his hand in the air. He watched him sit down before he sat in his own chair. 

“We've had a number of break ins. I'm sure you've read about them. The Planet seems to enjoy writing about my shortcomings.” Bruce knew it was Clark's way of calling him out. He wanted him to do something about Jason, to stop him once and for all. He tilted his head slightly when he felt the anger rising. Maybe Clark wasn't so wrong. 

“They do question those with means quite often.” Lex was looking at the pen in his hand like it was Superman and he was squishing his head beneath his thumb. He smiled suddenly and looked up at him. 

“But let's not talk about that trash. There was something you wanted to offer me?” 

-

Lex looked unhappy as he left, but he'd agreed. Lexcorp was in worse shape than he'd thought. 

He turned his phone back on and it vibrated for a minute straight as the texts poured in. 

**TD:** What did he say?

**DW:** Does he remember?

**TD:** Oh yes. He's going to suddenly remember everything after two years of not?

**DW:** In the movies when they see the one they love they remember everything. Grayson loves father.

**TD:** What movies are you watching?

**TD:** Did he tell you about Jason?

**DW:** You should have followed him.

**AP:** What would you like for dinner tonight?

Bruce answered Alfred and told the boys he would see them at the manor. 

-

Alfred sat at the table with them after dinner as he told them about their conversation. 

“He is remembering things, but no context. He quoted some comment I had made when he was younger and knew Alfred's name.” Bruce didn't tell them about the scars. It hurt. Dick had looked so unsure as he struggled to ask if there had been anything between them. He denied it, because there hadn't been anything. His declaration as the timer counted down did not make up a relationship. He shouldn't have kissed him in the office. But he'd wanted to. He'd wanted to again when Dick was just sitting across from him watching his face as he answered, like there would be more to learn if he just watched him long enough.

“I wish to speak with him.” Alfred's voice was affected like Bruce hadn't heard before. 

“I told him you would. He seemed afraid.” Alfred nodded and looked at the boys. They clearly wanted to see Dick as well but had been holding back. “I've made sure he knows he's welcome.”

“Really?” Damian asked. He sounded doubtful. Bruce's chest tightened in reflex. He'd made an effort to change. He spent more time with each of the boys. Too many of his memories with Dick were of them fighting and when he thought of Tim and Damian he found he had few other than their nights out in Gotham. Now, he knew what Damian looked like when he laughed so hard he couldn't breathe and coincidentally what Tim looked like covered in cake batter. He had shown them both Gray Ghost and had watched Wendy the Werewolf Stalker with Tim. 

“Yes,” he tried to keep his voice even, but Damian had nailed his biggest worry right on the head. He feared he would just hurt Dick again; it was all he had seemed to be able to do before. 

-

Bruce didn't see Dick again until the next week. The coffee shop was mostly empty. The weather had been unusually hot. He spared a brief thought to how Dr. Freeze was doing in Arkham. Then he saw Dick. He was sitting in the corner stirring a full cup of coffee. He was propping up his chin with the other as he stirred. He placed his order and watched as he waited. Dick's hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He hadn't noticed the length the last two times.He was still wearing his scarf even with the short sleeved Gotham Knights shirt he was sporting. He picked up his coffee and headed toward the table. 

“I'm surprised you're still supporting Gotham, what’s with the glasses,” Dick smiled up at him after a moment of shock. Whatever he'd been thinking had had his full attention. 

“I got it at a Knights game. We were in the nosebleeds, but it was fun.” he sat down. “What's wrong with my glasses?” 

He took a sip of his drink to hide the smile. Dick sounded like he had when he was nine and planning the secret identity he thought he would need. He had just met Clark and decided he wanted to be just like him. 

“Nothing. I like them.” Dick looked down at his coffee briefly, but was smiling when he looked back up. “How are you?” 

Dick shrugged. “As good as a guy who has no memories can be.” He looked him over, his scarf was still wrapped around his neck. He could see the edges of scarring dipping below the sleeve of his shirt. He had a nasty bruise on his other arm, but he had seen enough bruises to know it was most likely from sparring. 

They sat in silence, studying each other. He watched Dick’s fingers as he resumed his useless stirring. He could feel Dick's eyes on him. 

“You lied to me.” He looked up in surprise. He opened his mouth to refute it but Dick continued. “You said we weren't together, but the way you look at me…” he didn't need him to finish. 

“I did not lie.” He fought his instinct to hide this weakness. He looked back to Dick’s face. “I never told you how I felt.” He looked into those blue eyes and his walls crumbled. “And then you-” his voice cracked. He swallowed around the  lump choking him. 

“Then you thought I died.” Dick finished for him. His fingers were moving on the table like he wanted to reach out, but could not figure out why. 

“Why did you never tell me?” 

“I had a list,” Bruce admitted honestly. It hasn't been a very long list. At the top was he'd raised him, and the bottom was that he would ruin him like he had ruined the rest of his life. “I burned it. You would have liked it, very dramatic scene. Staring into the fire as the words disappeared.” He tried a smile. “But mostly, I was afraid.”

Dick chuckled dryly. “Of me?” he shook his head. He was close but not exactly correct. He'd been afraid of losing him. Too afraid to even try having him for even a minute. Dick seemed to understand without him saying anything. The silence stretched before he broke it. 

“Did I have any friends?”

Bruce nodded. “You had so many friends.” 

“Tell me about them?” 

“I didn't know most of them very well. But I'll try.” Dick leaned forward. “Your first friend in Gotham was Barbara.” He hesitated for a second, trying to think of how Dick had talked about her. “She is smart, funny, and beautiful. You used to rearrange the order of the list to what quality you thought was the best at that moment.

“I think Wally was your closest friend after that.” He thought of the speedster and intense games of tag where Dick swung from the chandeliers and Wally raced from room to room. The games had never lasted long, Barry always showed up a few minutes later once he had realized the boy was gone. “You were ‘The Kings of Prank Wars’.” He pronounced the title with all the pomp Dick had used. “Alfred once banned him from the manor when he got caught in the crossfire. I laughed for a week.”

“Must have been a good week.” Dick was smiling at him. He'd seen that smile before. Bruce straightened back up. He'd been leaning forward as he told his story. 

“Kori was your first love. I knew that much. We weren't talking at that point though. I've met her a few times since. She is strong and laughs easily. I think it was something you needed then. I know you stayed friends even after you broke up.”

Dick thought about them. He concentrated hard on the names as they came out just waiting for one of them to spark but none of them did. Disappointment loomed over him and threatened to take him under but he wasn't ready to lose the exciting air that he got when he was with Bruce. He’d had friends. “Do they…” _miss me?_ He thought about asking and immediately felt stupid and changed his course, “Are they still around here?” he asked. But he felt stupid about that too. Even if they were, it wasn't like he could just come out of hiding and see them again. Richard Grayson was dead and even if he wanted to come back- how was he supposed to actually do that? Jason had made it seem like he had been too much of a ghost to come back from the dead but according to Bruce, he had had a life. A real one with friends and movies and fun. He wanted to have that. Or at least remember having had that once. 

Bruce nodded slowly, seeming to understand without having to hear it. “Barbara is still here.” He told him, “Wally isn't too far off. He used to talk about you a lot. But after a while everyone stopped talking to me about what happened.” He cleared his throat and moved past that before Dick could comment. “I'm sure they would be ecstatic to hear from you.” 

Dick blinked at the table feeling heavy and shook his head. “That not possible.” He told him swirling the spoon in his coffee cup. 

“Why not?” Bruce demanded, apparently more strongly than he meant to because he startled himself and the table a few feet away from them and lowered his voice, “Why not?” he said again. Softer this time.

Dick didn't know what he was supposed to say here. “I'm dead Bruce. I died and people moved on. And more than that- how am I supposed to subject people to this version of a person who isn't even who I used to be?” He could feel his frustration rising in his chest and he was afraid that he might lose it and ruin this… whatever it was. “Do you like this?” Dick demanded back. “Am I really who you wanted to see?” He ran a hand over his face roughly and focused on breathing. “I don't want to be a burden to everyone who ever knew me. I just… I want to know…” He couldn't even get it out. What didn't he want to know?

“Yes.” 

“What?” he asked feeling exhausted, fingers tapping nervously on the table. 

Bruce grabbed his hand and Dick look up at him. “Yes. You are exactly who I wanted to see.” He told him. And he knew that he meant it. Looking into his ocean deep eyes, he couldn't help but wonder what his own feelings had been for Bruce Wayne before the world ended. His phone vibrated quietly in his pocket and he didn't need to look to know it was Jason. It was only ever Jason.

He frowned at that and took Bruce's phone where it was sitting on the table. He looked like he wanted to stop him but he didn't move, still holding onto his hand and watching as he typed first his name and then the number and passed it back to him. “I have to go.” He told Bruce. This time wishing that he didn't. Wishing he could blow Jason off, but he knew that if he didn't head back, he would come looking for him. He stood up and looked down at Bruce who was looking at his number like a treasure. “Don't call me. Wait a few days to text.” He warned and then he rushed out of the coffee shop and back around the block to the corner that Jason was waiting on, looking like a million effortless bucks in ripped jeans and a black t-shirt staring him down like he'd been there all day. 

“Where have you been?” he demanded in a playful tone but he could hear the real frustration behind it. He had been gone so many mornings and he knew that Jason knew there was something going on and that Richard wasn't going to tell him what it was. 

Guilt burrowed into his chest but he dropped his arm over his shoulders and smirked at him. “Looking for your ugly mug.” He bumped his hip.

Jason growled wrapping his arm around his waist not giving a single fuck what anyone thought. “You buying me pizza or what?” he asked and dragged him over to their favorite shop on the corner. 

-

He woke up sweating and shaking, staring into the black of his room completely petrified by the image of the dark figure looming over him. He breathed in a wet and gasping sound trying to push the dream away. He needed to be as far as he could be from the nightmare that was mostly just blurry images of a dark family and the burning fire that had erased him. But the worst part had been his parents. The broken structure of their bodies moving towards him slowly trying to drag him off the trapeze. 

“Rich?” the light from the hallway broke into his room and Jason peeked through the door. He tried not to look as crazy as he felt, but Jason didn't even need to look at him to know what was wrong. “I'll make coffee,” he said and left the door open when he walked away, giving Richard a minute to compose himself. 

It was the smell of coffee brewing that brought him out of the room and he followed it to the kitchen where Jason was waiting with a early gaze. Richard sat and accepted the mug with still shaking fingers and Jason let him sip on it before he asked, “Are you having those dreams again?” he asked. He wasn't looking at him, choosing to watch his own mug, allowing Richard his privacy in the truth of the question. Affection washed through him as he watched Jason. He wondered how crazy he must look. 

When he had first woke up from his coma he had had terrible nightmares. Nightmares about fires and masked men calling him over and over but not saying his name. He would be stuck in a dark space unable to breathe and then he would wake up in a burst of light, filled with so much air so fast that he wanted to throw it up. They scared Jason. He used to sit up with him pretending that he wasn't tired just to give Richard a little more time to deal with everything before he had to dive back into it. But Richard hadn't had these dreams for months. He nodded and Jason looked up at him with his lips pressed into a concerned line. “I thought we had gotten through this.” 

He sounded so disappointed. “I haven't had one in a while, “ he told Jason feeling defensive. 

“How long is a while?” Jason asked skeptically, giving Rich a look that told him that he knew more than he was saying. He sighed. “You talk in your sleep. Loudly,” he said stubbornly with steal in his eyes. 

Richard gave up the facade. “Last week.” He admitted through his teeth. 

Jason blinked at him and stood up annoyed but he didn't ask him any more questions. “C’mon.” He kicked the leg of his chair. “Let's go for a run.” 

-

Richard looked at his phone more often than he was proud of as he waited in the car outside of Luther Corp for Jason to come back out wondering how long he should wait before he texted Bruce. He had memorized his number. He knew that he couldn't save it, if Jason found out that he was talking to anyone… well he didn't know what would happen but he didn't want to think about it.  He could just wait for Bruce to text him, but he wasn't sure he trusted Wayne to get back to him soon. And the more that he thought about the man - the more he knew that he did want him to get back to him. Soon. A heat spiked up into his stomach and he bit his bottom lip, opening a new screen and typing the memorized number in carefully. 

**D:** What's that rule about texting after a first date?

He pressed send and turned off the volume on his phone, shoving it into his pocket as Jason opened the door and shook the rain off of him. He looked happy. Richard raised an eyebrow at him, “Good meeting?” he asked. 

Jason smirked. “I think I got us a job.” He told him proudly pulling too quickly into traffic and zooming off back towards Gotham. His phone buzzed and he pulled it up. 

**(278) 239-2963:** Depends on who you ask. And if you can call coffee a date.

“What kind of job?” he asked typing back quickly.

**DG:** Coffee can be a date. Anything can be a date.

“Let's call it research.  He shrugged looking back over at him but had gone back to staring out the window and pretending that his heart wasn't racing. “Just a small job for Luther. He's going to send over the details later.” Dick nodded but his heart really wasn't in it. He felt his phone vibrate but he didn't check it again until they were back home in the tunnel and Jason had wandered into the sparing room. 

**(278) 239-2963:** Is it a date?

He blinked at the question forcing himself to push past his nerves and answer. 

**DG:** Not unless you ask.

\---

Bruce's heart stuttered at the thought of dating Dick. He'd imagined what life would be like if Dick was still there. If he'd gotten to courage to finally admit his feelings and they'd been together. It had been good. Too good to be real, but he could have that now. With this Dick, the one that asked him if coffee was a date. He stared at his phone trying to think of a response. 

“I don't think even you can learn heat vision,” Tim said casually. He was propped against the door in his pajamas. “What's up?” He shook his head. 

“Dick texted.” Tim's eyes flicked to his phone. He watched the yearning on his face until it disappeared, Tim schooling his expression. “Do you think-” Tim looked up, that look back on his face. “What if Dick never regains his memories? It has been two years, and the only thing he's seemed to remember on his own was Alfred's name. He didn't even know me.” 

Tim's eyes closed. He looked exhausted. “How long do we wait before we give up? Is that what you're trying to ask?” 

“No!” He hadn't even considered that. “We will never give up on Dick. I wouldn't give up on any of you.” He looked Tim in the eye until it sunk in. “There  _ is _ a Dick out there. Would it be wrong to get to know him?”

“That's not Dick.” Tim's voice was flat. 

“You haven't talked to him,” he was too much like Dick for Bruce not to defend him. 

“No. I haven't.” Tim’s anger surged to the surface without warning. “My brother is alive and I haven't seen him for longer than 5 minutes.” Tim wasn't done. “You want me to say it's okay. It's not. You don't get a do over just because you fucked up the first time. That's not how life works.” He felt his own anger rising in response. “How would you be any different than Jason?” With that last comment Tim pushed off the doorframe and headed down the hall. 

Was Tim right? Bruce hadn't considered that. He had looked at this Dick, who wasn't angry with him, and hadn't wanted it to change, but was it really him? Jason had planted himself in Dick's life, told him who knew how many lies. He could see the resentment growing in Dick’s eyes. He still believed in Jason, but didn't like the lies. It would crumble. He knew that much. He couldn't do that. He'd lose Dick. And he'd deserve it. 

**BW:** I'll see you for coffee on Wednesday. 

He sent before heading out on patrol. Damian studied him as he pulled his gloves on. 

-

The next evening he headed up to the watchtower. Every month they had sparring sessions. As he walked through the tower he wondered who had drawn the short straw. Even Clark, who chose to spar with him randomly on his own, hated League sparring sessions. They were important.They were meant to be used to learn the strength and weaknesses of the other members and their strategies in battle. What the others used it for was extra time to socialize while occasionally punching the other person. He stepped into the gym and was surprised that it wasn't empty. Wally was stretching on one of the yoga mats across the room. 

“I see you're this month's sacrifice.” 

 

Wally jumped and looked up from his stretch.  “Actually I traded with Hal.” That surprised him. Wally rolled to his feet. “I wanted to thank you.” He rubbed the back of his head as he smiled looking like he had when he was thirteen and had broken a vase from the 1800’s. He gave him a nod and locked the door. Wally’s eyes widened when he pulled off the cowl. He changed into a ratty pair of sweats one of the others had left in one of the lockers. Wally was bouncing by the time he stepped onto the mat. 

They warmed up at normal speed. Wally was better at this speed than Barry ever was. He blocked another quick jab and couldn't help the smile. He'd forgotten the afternoons of Dick and Wally throwing each other across the room and the time Dick dislocated his shoulder when he punched Wally at speed. Dick worn the injury with pride since he had knocked Wally out. 

“What?” Wally asked, suspicious about his good mood. 

“Just thought of something.” He motioned the speedster forward and they were off. He dodged each attack, Wally was predictable for the most part. Occasionally he would change the angle of attack, but it wasn't as natural and he'd see the change coming. He didn't dare defend without his armor. They went a few more rounds each variant getting smoother and smoother until Wally had him on his back with a triumphant smile splitting his face. He jumped up and cheered to himself as he jogged slowly around the room.

Wally stopped suddenly and turned to him with suspicion in his eyes.  “Did you let me win?” 

“No,” Bruce grumbled, rubbing his neck as he sat up. Wally tossed him an ice pack and stuffed a whole protein bar in his mouth. 

“I beat Batman.” Wally beamed at him then a sad look filled his eyes. He'd seen it happen a few other times. 

“Dick would be proud,” he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. 

“You-” Wally was clearly shocked. He ran a hand through his hair. “He called me at four in the morning the first time he beat you. I told him it didn't count.” When he gave the young man a questioning look he continued. “You'd just fought Bane or someone else. I think Barry told me you'd been hiding three cracked ribs?” He remembered that. Dick had been worried when he hadn't gotten back on his feet after he had tripped him up. The floor had felt nice after the night he'd had. 

“He beat me a month later,” Bruce admitted. They were quiet for a few moments, Wally’s face lost in thought. “You don't have to answer, but what's your favorite memory of him?” he asked. He wanted something real to tell Dick. Wally looked over to him. He understood the hesitation. He hadn't even said Dick’s name since the funeral, let alone want to talk about him. Wally sat down and crossed his legs. 

“We hadn't known each other for very long. Dick and I were bored and I wanted to go out, I think you and Barry were working on something? I can't remember. But I remember Dick quoting you in this deep voice. He does- did the best Batman imitation. ‘ _Stay in the manor. Don't go out._ ’ I'd laughed and Dick had smirked back at me. We spent the rest of the night pretending we were you guys. I think you walked in as Dick leapt down from the second floor with a sheet tied around his neck. He'd spread his arms and growled out ‘ _I'm your worst nightmare_.’ Then you laughed. Barry's jaw had dropped. It's not much, but I just never forgot it. The Batman laughing.”

“If there was a way to get him back…” Bruce trailed off. He didn't know how to phrase the question. 

“Would he be happy?” He jerked and looked over. “Whatever it is. Would Dick be okay with it? I mean there are a lot of ways to bring a person back, but if it's not the same Dick. If it's not my best friend, who made  _ Batman, _ ” Wally nudged him, “laugh, then I don't think I would.” 

He considered that. Wally studied him like he was checking to see if Bruce was going to do something insane. He seemed to decide that it had just been a hypothetical and ate another bar. “You want to go again?” Wally stood and offered his hand. 

-

Tim and Damian were both in the cave when he got back. He watched them for a few minutes as they worked on one of the drug trafficking cases GPD had been having trouble with. They kept arresting who they thought was leading the group, but it continued. Damian pointed to something on the screen and he could see the argument starting. 

“What's the trouble?” 

Damian turned and glared at him. Tim closed the screen.  “You're working with Luthor?” 

“WE is providing the funding for a new medical device.” 

“Well he's bringing in a lot more than medical supplies,” Tim drawled opening the screen back up. Just a glance at the screen revealed Venom vials. 

“When were these taken?” Tim moved over as he approached the keyboard. He didn't need the answer, the next photo had a timestamp. He had been so sure, Lex had been genuine. There was no way that he didn't know what was going on. “Let's monitor this, destroy the cargo. I'll discuss it with Clark.” He rubbed his neck and relinquished control of the computer to Tim. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly and pat Tim's shoulder. He knew he'd understand. 

“No problem. It's what we Robin's do. Right Damian?”

“Number one rule of being a Robin is stop Batman from doing something stupid.” Damian quirked a half smile at him. He'd heard Dick say that before. He'd just met Tim, hadn't wanted another Robin. He'd gotten injured and Dick flicked him on the head and told him he was being stupid. 

“Number two is to do that stupid thing before Batman does,” Bruce grumbled. “Not very good guidelines.”

“Hey. Dick made these rules when he was eleven what do you expect, The Geneva Convention?”

-

He could see his breath as he jogged from the car to the coffee shop, the heat wave had snapped with a cold front so sharp that even the Penguin was hesitating at his door. The heat was on, but people were still huddled in groups sucking in the warmth of their daily caffeine. He placed his order and looked for Dick. It was Wednesday, he'd gotten a brief okay, but nothing more from him. He found him in the back corner as far from the door as possible in a worn hoodie. His scarf was wrapped higher than normal and he seemed to be burrowing into it. He grabbed his coffee and headed over. 

Dick glanced up at him and gave him a half smile. He looked bad. There was no way he was warm in the hoodie and jeans he was wearing. He pulled off his gloves and jacket. “Here.” Dick looked at him for a long moment before pulling the jacket on. He huddled into the warmth. He pushed his gloves back at him. 

“This is okay.” He stacked them at the edge of the table as he watched the color come back into Dick's face. “The cold aches,” Dick said softly, adjusting the scarf. He knew the feeling, his bones ached where they had been broken, his scars tightened across his skin. 

“I have a question for you.” 

Dick hummed. 

“My sons, your brothers, want to contact you. I told them you aren't ready to see them, but maybe text?” 

Dick was wide eyed as he stared at him.  “I have brothers?” 

He nodded. “Damian and Tim.” 

Dick mouthed their names. He looked at his cup, empty this time, for a while before nodding. “Okay. I might not always answer, but they can text me.” 

“Thank you,” he whispered. He hadn't let himself hope that he'd say yes, hadn't told the boys he would ask. He didn't want to let them down again.  “Other than the cold how are you?” 

Dick shrugged. “Bored.” he talked about his routine. The simplicity of the events surprised him. “I got mugged a few days ago. Or at least he tried to mug me.” Dick’s grin was lopsided. “Gave him the ol’ one-two,” Dick mocked punching the mugger, the sleeves of the jacket hid most of the motion. As their time wound down Dick looked more and more like he wanted to ask something, but as the hour struck he shook his head and shrugged out of the jacket. 

“Keep it. I have one in the office,” he pushed the jacket back. 

“I can't take it.” Dick was resolute and forced the jacket into his arms. “He would know.” At that he stared at the jacket in his hands. He pulled out his wallet. Dick eyed him suspiciously. “I don't want your money.” 

He scoffed.  “This is yours. I'll transfer the money if you want. Buy a real jacket. Buy one for Jason. Just take it. Please.” Dick snatched the money and looked around before tucking it into his pockets.

\---

DIck couldn’t tell him. He had tried for the entire hour and had tried to text him the entire day before that after he found out exactly what Lex Luthor wanted to pay them to do. But the longer he sat there the more he thought about who he was actually loyal to. Jason had been the only person in his life for so long. He was his brother, his partner and his best friend. Bruce was still a complete stranger to him. He knew a couple of things, but behind what he had been so forthcoming with there was still something that Bruce wasn’t telling him- eyes guarded in the same way that Jason’s had been for months. 

He took the money and he bought a jacket, it was leather with a soft blue lining and might have been the warmest thing he had ever put on. He bought Jason a jacket too because he knew that he needed it. And then after thinking about it a little more he rubbed them both against the ground for a few minutes to scuff them up enough to make it seem like he had gotten them at a second hand store. He shoved the rest of the money in an old sock that he found under his bed and tossed it back. He would bring it back with him next Wednesday and slip it in Bruce’s pocket when he wasn’t looking. Dick knew that he wouldn’t take it otherwise. He had been weird today, less open and more like a parent than he had ever seemed before. Like any lingering non-father feelings he had felt for Dick had just gone away over their nights apart. Something must have come up. Maybe it was the kids, his… brothers. 

And just thinking about the fact that he had brothers somewhere made him feel so incredibly guilty that he punched at the mattress. He had brothers. Real brothers somewhere that had mourned him and here he was with Jason- his chosen brother. The one that had taught him how to live again when he didn’t have anything left. Was it okay to have both? It didn't feel okay. 

He didn't feel okay. His head was throbbing and he was sweating even though he had taken the jacket and scarf off after he had entered the tunnels. He turned the lamp on next to his bed and leaned back into the pillows. He would sleep this off. Jason would be back in a few hours and they would head out to their first surveillance of WE, and Bruce wouldn't have to know about any of it. But even just thinking about that lie made him feel sick. He rolled over. 

-

“Rich.” He felt a small shake to his side but he didn't move, choosing to tuck further into bed. He was freezing and they weren't calling him anyway. Must be a mistake. “Rich, you alive?” another shake and this time he groaned but they were still wrong. He wasn't Rich. They shook him again and called his name and after that didn't work they stopped shaking him. “...Dick?” they said and he rolled over looking at Jason with groggy eyes, he looked angry and hurt but it only lasted a second before it disappeared and he pulled out concern. “Are you okay?” he asked and put a hand on his forehead. 

“I feel horrible.” he rasped as he realized just how bad he did feel. What had been a headache had gotten stronger and now he was freezing and exhausted even having slept since he had gotten home. 

“You feel like an oven.” he frowned looking around the room. “Hold on.” he told him and left for just a minute, not long enough for Dick to pull himself out of the haze and then he was back with a cool wet towel, some pills and a glass of water. 

“What is that?” he asked suspiciously, they were small and white and unlabeled. 

“Poison.” Jason deadpanned. “Just take it.” 

And he did, not even thinking about it. Jason left for a few more minutes and when he came back he was dressed in his tactical gear. “I have to go.” he told him, talking right through his weak protests. “It’s just surveillance, I will be fine I promise.” Jason walked over so that he was standing right next to the bed and frowned at him. “Just sleep okay?” he told him. 

Dick just nodded, already halfway gone. 

-

_ He was seven and falling. Falling from something very, very high. A tree. So high that he actually had time to think about just how much it would hurt when he hit the ground, to think about if he would even be able to get back up when he did. But he didn’t close his eyes and he didn’t scream. His father caught him right before impact, and he had looked at him with an odd sort of pride in his face. “You wanna come to work with me today?” he’d never smiled so hard in his life.  _

-

_ “He’s going to kill me.” A boy with red hair was staring at him, he looked no older than thirteen as they stood there trying to assess just how much trouble they would be in. The vase was laying in pieces on the ground, the table it had stood on for the entire time that Dick had been at the manor, knocked over with a weirdly shaped blade sticking out of the leg. He pulled at the sheet he had tied around his neck and ran a hand through his hair. “He is literally going to kill me. And he’s going to do it so well that no one will even know I existed, let alone I died.”  _

_ The redheaded boy pursed his lips and put a hand on his shoulder. “Just tell him I did it.” he told him simply like that was the only and easiest solution to the issue.  _

_ Dick cocked his head at him. “But then he’ll kill you.” he argued.  _

_ The boy grinned. “He can’t kill me if he can’t catch me.” he told him and then he sped off so fast that Dick wasn’t sure he had ever been there.  _

_ - _

_ He was fifteen and watching Bruce through the crack in the door of his study where he was sitting with a mammoth of a man with chunky glasses and a kind face. Bruce was sullen. Angry. At him. He knew that much even though he could not recall why. “You can’t stay mad at him forever.” The man told Bruce. _

_ “The hell I can’t.” he shot back with a glare. Dick cringed where he sat on the floor and scooted further into the shadows choosing just to listen and not watch. “He almost died. He is  _ always _ almost dying. It’s insane.”  _

_ “But he didn’t.” the other man offered up.  _

_ “That isn’t an excuse!” Bruce yelled. Dick had never heard him yell before. It shook him to the core and he sunk in on himself, holding his casted arm into his body as he pulled his legs in as far as they would go to his chest. “If everything is okay because he is still alive, then he’ll just keep doing it. He has to learn that there are some things that he just can’t do. There are boundaries. He can’t just jump into trouble like he’s-”  _

_ “You?” the man finished.  _

_ Dick didn’t want to hear anymore.  _

-

The memories were muddy when he woke up, but they were still there, raising even more questions than they answered, questions he wasn’t sure if he wanted or was allowed to ask. His head still hurt and his mouth was dry and when he sat up his body ached like it had when he had come out of his coma. He pushed himself out of the bed and dragged himself to the bathroom where he forced his mouth under the running faucet and forced the water down. He looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was insane. He pulled it back with his hand and drank a little more, splashing the cool water on his face before deciding that he was covered in enough of a film from sweating that he should just take a shower. 

He stood in the hot water for as long as it stayed that way, running his hands over his body, scratching at the dead skin with his nails before he pulled out the soap. He washed himself quickly, noticing a small sting when he went over the crook of his arm. He looked at it, pushing the soap away and notice a small red puncture wound that looked like it had just freshly scabbed over, a scab he had scratched off. 

He got out of the shower and ran a towel over himself quickly, standing under the sink light to get a better look. It was definitely a puncture right over a large vein in his elbow. Like he had been given an IV or something. He went back to his room quickly and opened his phone. He had twenty seven missed text messages, ranging from the Wednesday before to today, the Thursday of the next week. He had slept for an entire week. How was that even possible? All of of them were from Bruce. Most of them from yesterday and a few from this morning. 

**(278) 239-2963:** I got the usual table.

**(278) 239-2963:** Are you still coming?

**(278) 239-2963:** Dick is everything alright?

**(278) 239-2963:** If it isn’t just hit dial and I’ll find you.

**(278) 239-2963:** Dick?

**(278) 239-2963:** Dick please say something.

And more variations of the same. He wanted to text him back and tell him that he was fine and that he had been asleep, but how was he supposed to say that he had been asleep for a week? Why had he been? 

Jason. He left the room again needing to find him, finally stumbling upon him in the kitchen, sitting at the table flipping through the paper with a crease in his brow. “Jay?” he asked not sure why he felt so wary about it. Not sure how he felt about anything at the moment. 

Jason jumped up when he saw him and put a hand to his cheek, looking him over like he thought he might have been a ghost or something. “Shit, Rich. I thought you were dead,” he said sighing in such a relief that it was almost infectious. Almost. But there was something there. Something that was just a little too perfect, something rehearsed. “Do you know how long you have been out?” he demanded, that weird tone coming back again. 

“No,” he lied. He was better at lying than Jason was. He nodded to the chair and Jason moved quickly out of the way to let him sit down, pulling some orange juice out of the fridge and setting a glass in front of him. “Was it long? A few hours?” 

Jason looked like he didn’t want to tell him. “You’ve been asleep for a week.” he told him with a frown. “I had to give you a shot to get the fever down.” he said nodding to his arm. The arm that he hadn’t let Dick point out to him. He was jumping ahead of the bullet, trying to get in control before he didn’t get the chance to explain. Dick knew that the puncture was too big for a shot. He had been given an IV line. The only problem was that he didn’t know of what, and he wasn’t about to ruin the game to that Jason was playing. Not until he knew why. Jason sat across from him still looking worried. “How are you feeling?” he asked. 

Dick felt a lot of things. He felt weak and sore from being in bed for a week. He felt confused and hazy thinking about the strange dream/memories he had had and wondered if any of them had even been real. He felt frustrated that he had missed coffee with Bruce and he wanted to know if he would be mad at him. But mostly he felt hurt. Hurt that Jason, his best friend, would lie to him. Hurt that he was withholding something, something that was so important that he would go to the great length of drugging him into submission. And also, Dick felt scared. Because for the first time in all of this, he wasn’t sure if he had ever been told the truth. He wasn’t sure if he knew who Jason was at all. 

“I’m...tired.” he finally said because it was true. He was still tired, but mostly he just wanted an excuse to be away from him. 

Jason nodded at him. “I’m sure.” he agreed, “You should go lay down for a while. I’ll come check on you in a few hours.” he offered easily. Like it wasn’t exactly what he wanted him to do. 

Dick nodded and got up slowly stretching out as he did. As soon as he was out of the kitchen he ran. He knew that if he stopped at his room, he wouldn’t make it past Jason without a fight, and if he fought him now while he was still weak, he was positive that he would lose. He ran barefoot in just his jeans and an old band shirt to the tunnel entrance and climbed into the cold mid-day air of Gotham, and only then when he was completely out of the tunnel did he pull his phone out of his pocket and dial Bruce. 

It didn’t even fully ring before Bruce answered, his voice full of real alarm and concern. “What happened? What is going on?” 

But he couldn’t say that here. “I need to see you.” he told him breathless from the run and freezing. “Please, I need to see you now.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

Bruce was studying the space surrounding the Watchtower. In a few minutes he'd be able to see Earth as the tower rotated in its orbit. Something felt wrong. The stars didn't have any answers for him though.

There had been an alarm at one of a subsidiary’s buildings. Robin had been the closest. He'd checked the inside of the building, but there hadn't been any sign of what had set off the alarm. He'd called that he was returning to his patrol when the first bullet hit the bricks by his head. The next clipped him on the shoulder. His uniform stopped it from giving him anything worse than a bruise. By the time he'd gotten there the bullets had stopped, and Damian was clutching his shoulder huddled behind a pillar a few feet from the door. They'd gotten back to the cave and after some maneuvering Bruce managed to pull the bullet from Damian's uniform. It was a device they all knew too well. He crushed the device in his fingers. Tim had looked at him then, confused and not wanting to believe the conclusions that were clear for them to see. 

“He could have killed me. It was a clear shot.” Damian ground out once they got back to the cave and pulled his uniform off. His entire shoulder was already bruising. “Why did he miss?” 

“Jason wouldn't have missed,” Tim said quietly as he handed Damian an ice pack. They were right. Jason wouldn't have missed; the first shot would have ended his youngest’s life. 

“Find out what Jason got. He had to have been the one to set off the alarm.” Tim had looked at him for a long second before nodding and heading for the computer. 

Dick had told him that Jason and himself had gotten a job. This must have been it. He ran his fingers through his hair and pat Damian on his shoulder. “Go take a shower then have Alfred look at it. Okay?” Damian nodded, the boy's arm tightened around his waist for half a second as Damian slid down the table, the bare ghost of a hug. 

“He missed.” Damian gave him a smug smile before heading off for the showers. 

Bruce woke that morning to thoughts of a different explosion and the echoes of a dark laughter filling the morning light. Dick had been so quiet, he had thought it was from the cold, but now he wondered if he'd been hiding this from him, an attack on Wayne Enterprises. When his calendar alerted him to the League meeting he took that escape. 

The stars faded as a shape covered the glass next to him. 

“I'm nominating Tim.”

He looked over to Clark. The Kryptonian was looking out at the same stars he had been seeking solace in. His eyes narrowed when he saw the faint flick of his eyes, checking on his reaction.  “Two years ago you were telling me that I needed to keep a closer eye on him,” his voice was steel, the same as it had been then. 

“I had just walked in on-” 

“Last month you disregarded a key piece of intel he'd sent you. How long was John in the infirmary for?”

“He hacked the military-” Clark started, his entire body rising in offense. 

“You are proving my point. You have been second guessing him since the day I introduced you.”

“It was so soon after-” 

“Don't. Don't say that name.”

Clark fell quiet. He stared him down. There was a flicker of something. 

“Why are you nominating him?” There. That got a reaction. He watched Clark's face as he crafted his answer. It just took a second, but he knew him too well. 

“Diana and I can manage the leadership and battle plans, but the systems, the cases, these need your eye. Red Robin has your attention to detail and he knows the systems, better than you I might wager.” It was a good reason, one that he might have used, but he could see there was more, another reason. 

Bruce looked back to the stars.“Do what you think is right. Tim is his own man. He can make his own decision. But if anything happens to him I'm holding you responsible.” He poked his finger in the middle of the shield on his chest. It wouldn't do any damage, but it felt good. 

-

“Two months from now we'll be inducting new members. Prepare your nominations.” 

Diana looked to him, her eyes imploring him to tell the others now. He shook his head slightly and focused back on Clark who was studying him. He met his eyes and Clark straightened before turning to the screen. 

Hal was halfway through explaining the political climate on one of the planets requesting their assistance when his phone rang. He checked the caller on his display in the suit and answered it without another thought.  “What happened? What's going on?” Everyone's eyes moved to him. His voice had wavered slightly. He had been waiting for a response, something to let him know Dick was still there. 

“Is he on the  _ phone? _ How does he get reception up here?” Wally asked, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“I need to see you. I need to see you now.”

He was on his feet as soon as Dick had spoken. He looked across the table. Clark was staring at him in horror. He had recognized the voice through the call, the voice of a ghost. 

“Bruce. What did you do?” 

“I'll be right there. I'll send you an address,” he answered.  He looked at Clark for a second, there wasn't time to explain, then turned and headed for the zeta. He'd come back for the plane if he needed to. 

Clark was hot on his heels as he raced down the halls.  “That was _him_. How?” 

Bruce ignored him, he sent Dick the address and typed in the Gotham site to the control.

“I have to go.” The beam engaged and he was in Gotham again. He grabbed the pack hidden behind a false wall in the phonebooth. There were similar packs for the rest of the family. He pulled on the musty sweater and jeans. It felt wrong taking off the cowl, but it was noon. He couldn't walk the streets in uniform. 

Bruce waited outside the cafe. It was only a block from the site, and two buildings away from a safe house. A few people watched him as he paced in front of the cafe. He glanced at his reflection in the faux chrome detailing on the building. His hair was sticking up at all ends and he had a wild look in his eyes. He took a few calming breaths and slowed his pace.

“Bruce.”

He hesitated, he wanted to pull Dick into his arms, but Dick looked skittish like he'd bolt at any sudden movement. He nodded to the Cafe, but Dick shook his head. “Private.” 

Bruce motioned behind Dick and guided him down the street. He stepped into the building and headed up to the safe house.  A few of the peepholes held cameras and he knew Barbara was watching them walk through the halls. She had slapped him when he had told her that Dick was alive. Like Clark, she had believed that he had done something to bring Dick back. He had held her wrist until she believed him, and then held her as she cried. He let her tell the rest of the Birds. 

Dick walked to the window, it was mostly boarded up and the bulletproof glass was discolored enough to hide people inside. He knew they were safe here. He looked through the other two rooms then wandered back into the living room. He sat so he could see the front door and was out of view of the window. 

Dick looked worse than he had the last time he saw him. He worried at the crook of his elbow through the hoodie he was wearing while looking around the room as if at any moment something could leap out and attack him. He'd never seen him look this scared. He poured a glass of water and drank some before setting it on the coffee table between them. Dick stared at it for a long while before taking it and gulping the rest down. 

“What happened?” 

Dick was freezing and the longer he was awake the more jumpy he got, waiting for something to fly out at him or knock him over when he wasn't looking. He felt crazy. But how could he not? And for a second he thought about not telling Bruce anything. How could he help him? Really he was just a man, a powerful one but it wasn't like this was Superman, it wasn't like he had any way of figuring out if his suspicions were true. But he had to tell _someone_ and Jason wasn't a safe house anymore. Jason was the problem now. But where did he start? 

“I have been asleep since last Wednesday,” he told Bruce. The man didn't move, he didn't give any indication that he had heard him but Dick knew that he had, so he continued. “I was sick and Ja- my friend,” he winced at the sloppy cover, “Gave me an unmarked pill. I know it was stupid and I should not have taken it but he's my friend… I thought…” he trailed off, guilt at the accusation he was about to make coming up his throat like stomach acid.

“Of course you did.” Bruce told him taking the hand that he had out on the counter trying to hold himself up. He held it hard and firm, rooting him in the conversation, his eyes intense and eager to hear more. 

Dick let out a shaky breath and nodded. “I woke up this morning.” He told him and the memory dreams flooded back to him, “I dreamed things. About my dad and you and a boy with red hair- but then I noticed this.” He took his hand back and pulled up his sleeve to show him the small red mark in his elbow. 

He watched Bruce's face as it bent from confusion to shock, to understanding and finally disgust. “You think that he drugged you.” 

Dick nodded again his throat drier than it had been when they had gotten here. “Bruce… I think he's drugged me before,” he told him and swallowed hard on the bile coming up his throat. He felt sick, “I'm not… I'm not sure I was ever really in a coma.” Bruce stared at him, shocked again. Insecurity flooded him instantly and he felt heat rising in his cheeks, “I know it sounds insane but as far as I know there was nothing wrong with my head. I need to get my hands on the documents from the hospital to really know, but if they kept me in a medical coma… I read about people who lost parts of themselves when they came out of it.”

Bruce was still silent, he was silent for almost five minutes just watching Dick, struggling with something he clearly didn't want to say, until finally, “You have to go back, Dick.” 

His heart sank to the very bottom of his chest when he heard that. He hadn't exactly been expecting him to offer a room or anything but maybe a little advice, a little anything.  “You don't believe me.” he said feeling himself harden so that he wouldn't just lose it on him. This guy was supposed to be his… person. And he was sending him back to the wolves?

“No!” he said grabbing his shoulders when he tried to look away and made him look at him, “Dick, I will always believe you. No matter what, ” he promised and Dick believed him, “But if your friend really did this, who knows what else he could do. I don't want to take that chance.” He told him. And even though he didn't want to, he knew that Bruce was right. Dick nodded and Bruce squeezed his shoulders hard before he let him go. “I'm going to find your medical files. Wait for me to call.” He said and then he slipped out of the house and left him there to pull himself together giving Dick the briefest flash of a dark shadow walking away.  He waited a few minutes before he followed him out, ducking back onto the street hoping that no one would notice he wasn't wearing shoes. 

-

He played up being sick for 2 days but made sure he wasn't acting sick enough that Jason offered him medicine again. Then he forced himself to spend time outside of his room. When Wednesday rolled around and he hadn't heard from Bruce he took it as a silent cue to continue laying low. Instead he asked Jason if he wanted to get out, go do something above the tunnel and, after a minute of pestering, he agreed. 

And he was in a much better mood as soon as they hit the fresh air. Dick almost forgot to be wary of Jason as they browsed the windows that they passed by and joked about the people who passed them. They had been wondering around for a few hours when Jason grinned at him and pointed at a store across the street. “Wait here.” He told him and skipped across the road. Dick let his guard down for a minute. 

He shouldn't have. As soon as he let himself relax he felt a rope close around his throat and tug him into the alley. He gagged and just managed to get his arm into the lasso to keep it from breaking his larynx. He struggled to his feet only to be kicked down hard by a gorgeous dark hair woman in a leather jacket, the one he'd seen the messy haired boy talk to at the museum. She was staring down at him like a piece of gum on her shoe that she had pressed hard into his chest. “What are you?” she demanded in her thick husky accent.  

“I don't know?” he shot out without thinking and used his arm to rip the lasso off of himself and spun under her to sweep her feet. She hit the ground hard and scrambled up and back. She wasted no time coming after him, her fist shattering the wall just inches to the right if his face, “What the hell are _you_?” he demanded spinning out of the way of another hit that cracked the concrete. Holy shit. 

“You look like him.” She growled angrier than before, “What did Bruce do to get you back? What deal did he make?” she demanded running at him. 

Dick sprinted up the back wall and spun over her in the air. She stopped to watch him, long enough for him to hold out his hands and try to reason with her. “I don't know how you know Bruce,” he told her carefully, not backing up but wanting to keep his distance. He could see the holes in the wall where her fist had broke through in his peripheral and he didn't want to chance that being his face. “But I went looking for him. He thought I died. I didn't know-” he stopped when a blur of movement came up next to him and just barely ducked out of the way of the red headed man who came to an abrupt stop next to him. 

His face was more forgiving than the woman's. He looked shocked and hurt and… sad. But more than that, the man looked familiar. So familiar that he almost forgot to be freaked out by how fast he had moved in. “Holy shit.” the red headed man said staring at him. “I can't believe it.” He looked to the woman desperate, “Is it him?” he demanded. 

“I cannot be sure.” She admitted looking uncomfortable about it. 

Dick did start to back up then, their gaze almost too much for him to withstand. “Who are you?” he asked them sounding braver than he had the right to with how terrified he felt. 

He backed into something hard and warm and felt a steal hand wrap around his arm, turning around to stare down the mammoth man from his dream. Not a dream. An actual memory. He knew him and if he knew him, the man had to know who he was. He had to see that he was Dick Grayson. But his face stayed hard and flat. “It's not for you to ask questions,” he said sternly. Pain cracked across the back of his head before he passed out.

-

When Dick woke up he was in an empty room, his head tender and his eyes hazy enough to make it seem like he was still asleep. His muscles were sore and his mouth tasted like copper. He tried to reach up and touch his head but his hands had been bound behind the back of the chair he had been placed in.

“Fuck,” he groaned and a door to the side of the room opened making him close his eyes to the light until it shut again. The beautiful woman entered the room she looked less angry than the last time he had seen her. She walked slowly until she was standing directly in front of him and crossed her arms. He waited knowing that she would want to speak first and he was in no position to protect himself. 

“Hello.” She told him and he blinked at her. “My name is Diana Prince. Do you know who you are?” 

He would have thought it was a strange thing to ask if he hadn't been asking himself that for two years. “Richard Grayson.” He told her raising an eyebrow. He didn't think that she was asking for his name but he honestly didn't have anything else to offer her. 

She nodded. “Do you know who I am?” she asked. 

He blinked at her confused, “Diana Prince?” he offered. 

She frown deeply at him and pulled out her rope from earlier, walking over to him and slipping it down over his shoulders. She kneeled in front of him. “Do you know who I am?” she asked again more pointedly. 

“Diana Prince.” He said again faster without thinking. She slipped the rope off of him looking sad and disappointed. Then she left him there and exited the room. 

\---

“Robin. Do not engage.” Tim's reminder came a second before his. Damian grumbled a reply. Bruce watched Robin's tracker turn as expected. This was working so far. 

“He's coming up quick on your position Red,” Damian called, breath audible as he cut off. 

“I got him,” Tim confirmed. This was his plan. Bruce had gotten back from speaking with Dick, his mind racing at what he'd said and unable to believe that he'd managed to send Dick back to Jason. He knew it was the right thing for now, he couldn't investigate with Dick underfoot. Tim had come down that evening, saw the medical files, and had grabbed a chair. They had the entire story pieced together by the end of night. He looked to Tim, who nodded. He called Dick. The phone rang out. His voicemail wasn't set up, and why would it be. No one should be calling him. Bruce didn't risk calling again. 

“He's all yours B,” Tim called, pulling him back into the present. He listened for the faint footsteps and braced as the door flew open. Jason collided with his arm and hit the ground. He wheezed as he clutched his throat. 

“Where is he?”

Jason glared up at him. He watched him swallow thickly, but he didn't answer. 

“What did you do to him?” He felt the boys move into position. Back up he didn't think was necessary. 

“I saved his life. Rescued him from you.” Jason's words were gravel as he spat them out. 

“You nearly killed him. For two months you kept him and when he almost died you finally took him to the hospital.”

Jason seemed surprised as if he didn't expect them to find out.  “For two months you've left him with me. I expected you to snatched him back as soon as you found out. I guess you didn't want him as much as I thought.” Jason was climbing to his feet, eyes darting around looking for exits. He wouldn't get one. 

Jason went for his gun and Bruce closed the distance between them. All of the rage simmering beneath the surface bubbled until he was boiling with it. His movements were sharp, effective. Within two moves he had Jason disarmed. Two more had the younger man on the defensive. Whoever had trained him had done a good job, he was able to put up a solid defensive, leaving few opportunities for him to land a blow, but Jason hadn't been doing this for as long as Bruce had. He feinted left, took a hard punch to the ribs before kicking out his legs and taking him down. He landed blows while Jason was unable to properly defend. He felt his fingers grabbing at his arms and face, trying to push him off, desperation overcoming his training. 

“Bruce!” Jason's nose broke under his fist. 

“Father!” Jason's mouth curved into a bloody smile. 

His thoughts twisted. Dick's bloody knuckles, broken teeth in that same bloody smile. He collapsed back stumbling to his feet. Damian hit Jason in the head with the hilt of his sword. He went limp instantly. 

Bruce looked down at the boy. One of his boys. Unconscious and bleeding by his hand. 

Tim was suddenly in front of him, blocking his view. His eyes flicked up.  “Go get the car. We'll get him secured.”

He hummed and straightened. 

-

“Uhhh Batman,” Wally sounded nervous. “Wonder Woman wants to talk to you. She said you need to come up to the tower now.” 

“I'm busy.” Jason was thrashing against the door of the isolation room. 

“It wasn't a request. She made sure I knew to tell you that.” 

“I am busy.” the window on the door cracked. He pressed a button and the room filled with gas. 

“Bruce.” Clark was on the computer. “Now.” He looked serious and seconds away from melting the camera. 

He looked to the feed from the isolation room, Jason was on the floor by the door. Damian and Tim were at the main computer, they were trying and failing to hide their interest. 

-

“What did you do?” Bruce demanded, voice flat. Dick was sitting in one of the cells on the tower. He stared through the one-way mirror at him. Dick was looking around, studying his surroundings. He looked tired, but calm. He rubbed at the back of his head and winced. He looked over to Diana who had been studying him the entire time. 

“He does not know me,” she said, asking her own question without acknowledging him. 

“He doesn't know  _ me _ .” He spat and her face crumpled. He looked back to Dick. 

“Bruce.” her voice was soft. She touched his wrist. “What happened?” 

He had asked himself that question every day for the past month.  “Jason pulled him from the explosion.” He stared at Dick, who was tapping an erratic rhythm on his knees. 

“He survived?” she sounded horrified as she looked back through the glass. “How does he not know you?” She sounded more horrified about that. 

“He lost his memory.” 

“His memories are there. They are hidden from him.” He turned as J’onn walked in. “I can reveal them, but I need his assistance.” 

“He does not trust us. Because he does not know us.” Diana said. They had tried convincing Dick to let J’onn help. Bruce would have told them they were making an error. He already felt that his head had been messed with. Bruce wasn't even sure that  _ he _ could convince Dick to let them help him. He would try though. He wanted his Dick back. 

-

Bruce hesitated before opening the door. There would be no going back from this. 

He placed his palm on the sensor and the door slid open. His cape swayed against his legs as the air shifted.  Dick looked up when the door opened.  There was a moment when they stared at each other. 

Then the door slid shut behind him. 

Dick was on his feet, the chair he'd been sitting on was launched into the air. The angle was off, but the force of the chair hitting the door echoed in the room. Dick backed into the corner, murmuring as he stared at him. His eyes were wide with terror. Bruce took a step closer and Dick tried to press himself further into the corner. His arms came up to defend himself. The murmurs were louder. He froze as he heard the trembling voice. 

“No.” 

He repeated it over and over. 

“Dick,” his own voice cracked.

Wide blue eyes looked up at him, like they had all those years ago in the crowd of Haly’s as his fingers reached up and he unlatched the cowl. “I'm not going to hurt you.” He pulled the cowl off and met Dick's eyes.

If this was a dream Dick was done with it. He stared at Bruce in the suit, mask clenched tight in his hands looking at him like he wasn’t sure if Dick would attack him or crumble. Dick wasn’t sure either. Every inch of him was crawling in the fear that kept him up at night. The fear that stole the air out of his lungs and kept him frozen like he was now, the cruelest joke he could think of playing out in front of him. This had to be a nightmare. He knew that if he moved he would be able to walk right through him and wake up- but he could only stare. 

The Batman moved closer to him but Dick was out of room to back up. He kept his eyes open, refusing to blink in case he missed it. He could move so fast- he didn’t know how he knew that but he knew it. And if he closed his eyes he would see the shadows, feel the pain of his body breaking and the world falling around him. So he watched him wide eyed and horrified, forcing himself to stand still and bare it until he could wake up back up with him in his bed where the entire thing would be a dream. Maybe the blow to his head had still had him knocked out. Maybe Dick wouldn’t wake up… But he waited as the man walked closer to him, wearing the warm and familiar face he had been starting to grow so accustomed too and held out a hand to him. He turned his face away, but kept his eyes on him, needing to know the moment of impact. “Dick,” he said in Bruce’s voice, making him think that this surely had to be a dream. That the world could surely not be this cruel. 

His heart thumped into his throat when the hand caught his jaw and he moved without thinking, ducking the arm and spinning around the Batman, pushing him into the wall- but he pushed back and grabbed him. Dick broke the hold and shoved the heel of his palm into his chest, sending him stumbling back and off balance enough for him to sweep his legs. He pinned him down with his knees, but he hadn’t gotten a good enough balance for it to hold and the man managed to overpower him, pinning his arms under his legs and holding him at the shoulders. 

All Dick could do was shake and squeeze his eyes closed. Even with the cowl off, he knew that he was here. The batman. Bruce  _ was _ the batman. And he was so hurt and so scared and so frustrated and so… broken in that moment that all he could manage to do was clench his fists and try to keep breathing. If he just kept his eyes closed maybe he would go away. He felt tears burn as they carved their way out of his solidly shut eyelids and he forced his lips tight, not wanting to breath more than he had to even though he didn’t know why. “Dick…” he heard the man say again. He heard _Bruce_ say. And a small whimper just barely escaped him as he waited for the blow, the knife, the bullet- the world had already exploded once, so he waited for the new one. The new pain that would wash away this one and everything else he had managed to learn. Maybe if he just forgot again then it wouldn’t hurt like this anymore. He would just be happily ignorant and he would never have to know that the only two people in his life had both been lying to him since the day they met. 

He lay there waiting for the blow but it never came. And after few minutes past by and the pressure left his chest and he heard the man walk out of the room- all Dick could do was roll away from the mirrored wall and curl in on himself to wait for the shaking to stop. 


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

 

Bruce leaned against the door and breathed. His fingers were shaking when he pulled the cowl back over his head. He held his breath, reinflating the hollowed out shell that was his heart. A few seconds in and he let it out slowly before he walked back into the room. He knew Diana was still in there. She'd seen the entire thing. Her eyes met his, filled with the pain he couldn't show.

“I was wrong,” she said softly. She spoke like she was talking to a scared child, trying to convince them that they were safe and to be brave. He couldn't find it in him to believe her.

“No. You were right. He knows me. It was the right thing to do. But this,” he waved his hand over the cowl. “It's another thing that was kept from him.” He watched Dick start to calm down, his trembles slowing until they stopped. “He just doesn't trust me anymore. And he shouldn't.” Diana touched his shoulder. He stepped out of her reach. “I'm going back to the cave. Let me know if there is any progress. Wally could help. Dick needs someone just on his side.” He looked one last time at Dick through the glass before leaving.

\---

There wasn’t a clock in the room so he didn’t know how much time had passed since the world had reshaped itself into such a horrible place. He sat in the corner of the room just watching the door with his hood up, waiting for the next attack, the next shock- the next anything. Because surely something would be coming. They had fed him two meals. Dick ate and waited, refusing to sleep even though he could feel his body growing heavy and sore with the need for it. He had just started to drift off when the door opened again and the beautiful woman, Diana, came back into the room. 

As she walked very slowly over to him, Dick noticed how her entire demeanor had changed from the last two times he had encountered her. She wasn’t angry or intense, she even looked a little sad and worse than that, she looked sorry for him. She stopped a good five feet in front of him and then she sat down on the floor crossing her legs. “Are you cold?” she asked kindly.  _ Yes _ . He just blinked at her and she frown continuing. “Someone will come and bring you a blanket, some pillows… you look very tired Richard.” 

And something in the way she said his name sparked off of him, sending a little flash of memory of her in a long silver dress, smiling broadly at him while she straightened his tie. He sat up a little straighter and stared at her. “I’ve met you before?” he asked. She perked up at that and raised an eyebrow. “I know your face. But I don’t know why.” 

“We are friends,” she told him earnestly. “In a way, kindred spirits.” She smiled at him and looked like she was having trouble keeping her distance from him, “Do you know that you used to be a museum curator?” she asked. Dick shook his head slowly. He had known that he had worked at the museum but he felt like twenty six would be rather young to run it. “You have a good eye for beautiful things.” she grinned at him, like it was an inside joke. “You spent time with me in Paris after you got out of school. You wanted to learn from me because of my background in artifacts and trades. We were close before the accident.” 

He nodded slowly thinking about the way that she had attacked him and wondered just how close they could have been if that was the way she greeted him after all of that time. He thought about the wall, and the ground after that. “What are you?” he asked not caring how rude it sounded. 

“I am Amazonian.” she told him simply, like that was simple. “I am Wonder Woman,” she said like it made her uncomfortable to admit the words out loud. 

But to Dick, none of this rang a bell. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked after he chewed on her answer for a minute. 

“We brought you here because you are our friend.” she told him, the sadness from before back in her eyes as she leaned in, examining him, “We want to help you Richard.” she told him and placed her hand over her heart to try an express how much she meant it. “We thought that you might be a fake, that Bruce had wanted to believe something horrible. But now that we can see it it really you, all we want is to help you get your own mind back.” 

Dick wanted to believe her. He wanted what she told him to be true, but how could he? Both Jason and Bruce had lied to him, he had no one to ask that would tell him a truth that he would know for sure was a truth. “I think I want to sleep now.” he told her in dismissal, really just wanting the chance to be alone again so that he could think. 

She nodded understanding and stood up. “Someone will bring you bedding.” she promised and left him. 

-

There were three meals before the next visitor came in and interrupted the hours of staring and thinking that had kept Dick in a trance. He heard a small argument through the crack. “Just let me try- he’s my best friend.”

“It’s not him anymore Wally. For all we know he could be completely-” he heard a loud “HEY!”  after the other man who was not Wally cut off and the door slammed open and shut that he would have jumped to his feet if he had had time before a man appeared leaning on the wall nex t to him and he shouted, sliding away, his heart hammering. 

“Shit! Sorry Dick!” he grinned at him wiggling his eyebrows. “I forgot what a baby you are.” he told him watching him with the thirsty eyes of a kid looking at his favorite toy. He tilted his head at him, “Do you remember what a baby you are?” he asked after a second as his smile dropped. 

Dick sucked in a deep breath and just watched him concerned. How was it even possible that he had moved so fast? How was it-

His dream popped up in his head again, the redheaded boy who was gone before he had a chance to tell him not to be stupid. He had grinned in the same stupid way. Dick blinked and really looked at the man for a minute. This was Wally. Bruce had told him that his best friend's name was Wally and in that moment with him sitting there, staring at Dick like he was the best thing in the world, he knew that this had to be him. “I don't remember you.” He told him honestly and continued trying to ignore the look of pain the hit the man. “But I think I know you. Wally.” the man's head snapped up and his eyes widened. “We are best friends.” Dick swallowed hard his chest starting to hurt as he spoke. “I broke a vase and you covered for me. You-” 

Wally crushed Dick to him so tight that he could barely breathe but he didn't know if that was because of the hug or the relief and sadness that was pouring through him. 

“I'm sorry,” he said and he kept saying it. He didn't know why he was sorry but he was. He was so sorry and he had to make Wally understand that. 

“S’okay.” He mumbled happily into his shoulder and they just sat like that for a while, not needing to say anything else. 

\---

“Go see if Alfred needs help with dinner.” Damian looked up from the computer. He didn't appear to have heard him come in. There was a flicker of irritation, Damian always loved to point out when someone failed to sneak up on him. “Go,” Bruce put more force behind the word. Damian went. He looked back a few times, but left. As soon as the door shut he locked the cave down. Entrances and exits sealed. He shut off the computer and headed for the isolation room.

Jason watched him from the small window. He pressed the button on the independent console and the room filled with gas. Jason dropped from view. He cleared the room and opened the door. Jason was sprawled against the door. He pulled him into the far corner and took a seat across from him, his own back against the wall. He waited. 

There was a small gasp, faint, but he had had nothing but his own heart beat to listen to for the last half hour. The even breaths of someone pretending to be sleeping followed. He was already looking at Jason when the younger man opened his eyes. He saw the surprise before it was hidden, then the anger flared, sparking the emerald in the sea of blue. 

“The batbrats finally get tired of you? Tossed you to the lions ” 

He watched Jason sit up, carefully moving to never lose eye contact. He didn't move. Jason's eyes flicked down to his black shirt and pants. The batsuit sat on display in the cave. 

“You won.” 

The eyes that had been looking at the door, searching for an escape route, flicked back to him. He sat in the corner of the isolation room, watching triumph flash in his eyes of the man he'd called son. 

“Richard finally met the Big Bad Bat.” he said with a knowing smile. Bruce just looked at him, eyes searching for anything of his former Robin. Some of him had to still be there. But with each passing second as the glee at his pain filled Jason's eyes he saw less and less. 

“What happened?”

Jason's smile dropped a little, but he was grinning as he started talking.  “The Bat-” 

“To you.” he interrupted. “Jason, what happened to you?” his voice was strained as he spoke. The shock at the question was written on Jason's face and even when he tried to suppress it, Bruce could still see the wary unease on his face. 

“I died,” he spat. “Then I was alive. But you weren't there.” He took a shaky breath, eyes on fire. “You let me die. You let that maniac go free. You deserve to lose everything. Like I did.” 

He nodded as Jason finished. He looked so much like the kid who stole his tires, the kid who told him no, the kid who spat on the Joker. Under all of that anger was Jason, his Robin. He broke as it slid under and the rage flared up again. 

“What did you say that one time? There's no point if Dick isn't here.” It was his turn to be surprised. Jason smirked. “You don't remember… Dick had just told you he wasn't coming back for Christmas. You had been excited earlier that day, telling me about the traditions your family had done when you were a kid, and how much you were looking forward to being together for a day. Then all of a sudden we were going to patrol instead and Alfred was upset.” Jason was telling the story like it was a report of what had happened the night before. “He had asked you why we couldn't still celebrate. I hadn't cared about the stupid holiday before, but you had built it up in my head. My first real Christmas and you were taking it back. Because _he_ wasn't going to come.”

“Jason-” he started, but paused when Jason shot him a glare.

“I thought taking your son from you would be the thing to break you. Since family was so important to you. Did you know it only took 3 days for your little Robin to stop declaring his father would come for him. The other one lasted until I got Dick. Smart. He knew what was coming next. I think you surprised them all when you chose them.”

“It was the right choice.”

Jason scoffed. There was something different in the anger now. A disappointment that wasn't there before. It was obvious he hadn't wanted him to choose Dick. He'd ruined his plans. 

“Why did you save him?”

“He was the closest thing I had to a brother.” Jason looked tired as he answered. 

“He doesn't trust you anymore.” Jason just looked at him, his eyes resigned. He knew then that Jason had seen it coming. He had known that it would have been impossible for Dick to never find out the truth. He had seen the inevitability and had hoped anyway. He watched Jason's shoulders hunch the tiniest fraction. Had he really just wanted a brother? “Nor does he trust me.” Jason looked up. “I've lost him all over again.” He didn't bother hiding how much it hurt to say that. Jason needed to know. He needed to see it, to believe it. This needed to be over. He stood up when he thought Jason had accepted. 

“If you believe that, you are more of a fool than I thought you were.” He looked back hand hesitating on the control pad. Jason was looking at him with a glint in his eyes. Then he laughed a raw cracked sound. “Did you know that even when he was forgetting his own name he still called out for you.” Jason spread his arms wide and smiled a cracked broken smile.  “Bruce! Help me. Please Bruce.” Jason's voice wavered and broke as he mocked Dick. “Don't leave me,” Jason pleaded in a broken voice. With each word his heart shattered a little further. Jason shifted, hands touching the ground. He could see that he was going to move at him and kicked out. Jason slumped against the wall, unconscious. 

-

Clark was in the cave when he stepped out. He glared at the disappointment on his face. 

“I regret giving you an override code.” Bruce locked the door back and reset the monitor. Clark let out a breath when he saw Jason on the screen. He had thought the worst of him. Again. 

“Damian called when he couldn't get in. Tim tried. He's not very happy with you at the moment.”

“Is anyone ever?” Clark scoffed. He shoved past him when Clark stepped in front of him. 

“Your kids are worried about you. We are all worried.” Clark was earnest, but they had had this conversation before. Nearly two years ago when he had first gone back on patrol. No one had thought that he was ready. ‘Too soon’ they had all said. He'd known then that everyone had been waiting for him to crack. He looked at Clark and realized they had been waiting this entire time. No one expected him to move on. Looking back on his initial reaction to seeing Dick again, he wasn't sure that he ever actually had moved on. 

“There is no need to worry. You can go now.” 

“Bruce, you are not okay.”

“Get out.” He leaned on the main computer. His eyes met Clark's, the man was pleading with him. He hardened and Clark's shoulders slumped. He was alone in the cave with a small boom. 

-

There were times when he could feel Gotham alive beneath him. The people in the streets rushing like the blood in her veins. The beat of their feet on the pavement the steady thrum of her heart. It was nights like that he was reminded of why he had dedicated his life to protecting her. And she protected him when she could. Her shadows darkening as he caught his breath, hiding him from his enemies. The crumbling bricks holding strong as he swung through the cool night air. And as he crashed through the air taking a leap of faith across a gap he had no chance of making she reached out to him and welcomed him into her arms. The harsh metal of the fire escape steady beneath his fingers. 

She came alive beneath the feet of each of his Robins until they were hers too. 

Her night skies welcomed Dick like an old friend. The lights of her buildings twinkling like stars behind him as he flipped building to building, feet barely touching the ground before he was in the air again. He had watched the boy swing through the city, his city, and felt her rise like a crescendo within him as if she was letting him know she approved. 

The pavement and walls were steady beneath Jason's feet and fists. He raced down the alleys, through the muck and grime of Gotham and never lost his footing. He used her bricks against his opponents, their fists colliding with the rough surface when he was cornered, her walls propelling him through the air as he fought freely in her shadows. In the end however, she'd been unable to help him, and it was foreign bricks that buried him. 

The third Robin was never lost in the maze of her streets. She guided Tim through the winding alleys and sloping tunnels. She showed him her truths, whispered secrets into the night so only he would hear. 

For Damian the shadows darkened, they moved like liquid across the city, obscuring his movements until it was too late for the enemy. 

He stood above the city and let himself hope. If he closed his eyes he could almost feel her answer him. 

She was there. 

She would always be there.

A siren echoed through the wind and he fired his gun. She caught his hook and he swung, off to save the city that had taken so much from him, but tried its best to give back. 

-

He sat in the cave and pulled up the feed from the tower. Dick was sitting on the small pallet they'd given him. Wally sat a few feet away. The speedster was talking, hands flying as he spoke. Dick was mesmerized, all of his attention was on his companion. He caught his hand reaching out to the screen, he dropped his hand to the desk. He stared as Dick asked a question, Wally listened to the question and considered his answer for a moment before he was back into his animated answer. He watched them for a few minutes while the data stream ran. Dick laughed and he shut off the feed. He needed sleep. He pushed himself up and to the showers. 

He walked through the empty manor, his footsteps echoing down the halls. Tim hadn't been back, Damian flitted between the tower and the cave. He checked in, but he couldn't blame him for following his brother.

He got ready for bed the same way he did every night. He caught himself pausing as he finished brushing his teeth. The face looking back at him was tired. He was tired. He rubbed a hand over his face and turned back to the room. The constant aches and pains cried out as he settled in bed. His back throbbing as it had every night since Bane. His elbow clicked as he turned off the light. When he was younger he had listed the broken bones and the wounds as he fell asleep, his version of counting sheep, but now the list was too long. He'd told Alfred once before and the man had simply told him to count the bones he hadn't broken. He closed his eyes and thought of Dick smiling shyly as he listened to Wally. 

\---

Wally was fascinating. Dick loved watching the way that he spoke and listening to his stories. He listened as Wally talked about himself and then as he told Richard about Dick. He felt strange hearing his life recounted to him like a story but it felt like he was learning about someone else. Like an uncle or an older brother he hadn’t met yet. The two of them talked for hours and Dick would have listened to him talk for much longer but there was a knock on the door and the big man with the glasses stuck his head in, looking between the two of them with that same sad look that everyone except Wally had given him. 

Dick got to his feet warily and ducked into his defensive stance automatically. His head still hurt from where the man had knocked him out and, sad look or not, he didn’t trust him. 

Wally jumped up too and held his hands out to Dick, his earnest eyes searching his face with an easy smile. “It’s okay,” he told him. And Dick wasn’t sure why, but he believed him. Mostly. There was still a small hesitation lingering in his shoulders like a knot he couldn’t soothe, but he let himself straighten up. “Dick, this is Clark. He’s, like, our boss kind of.” 

Clark just raised an eyebrow, amusement perking the corner of his lip, “Sorry to interrupt, but Dick has another visitor if he is feeling up to it.” 

Suspicion shot through him again, just barely overshadowed by his curiosity. “I have a choice?” he asked Clark slowly, not really knowing if it was going to come out right. 

“He wanted to make sure that you knew you could say no.” Clark told him simply. And after a moment Dick nodded, curiosity consuming everything else.

Wally squeezed his shoulder and followed Clark out the door leaving it open as they went. He thought about making a run for it, but he knew that he wouldn’t make it far, not with Wally on their team. So instead he waited, taking a few steps closer to the door, trying to get a look at what was around him when the door shut and he wasn’t alone anymore. 

It was the mop haired boy from the museum. They stood there silently staring at each other for a minute, he gave Dick a minute to process, and Dick was trying to figure out what he could possibly be doing there. The boy moved slowly forward, holding out a small but heavy looking machine and set it on the table in the middle of the room and pulled a chair to it. He motioned for Dick to do the same and he did without complaint, wanting to understand what he was trying to do. The boy strapped something around his own chest before he sat down and then rolled up his sleeve and pulled another strap from the machine and wrapped it tight around his bicep. Then he slipped a few covers onto his fingers and turned the machine on. It whirled for a second and then it finally stopped and the boy cleared his throat. “My name is Tim Drake.” he said and the machine went off again scratching lines into a paper that it spewed out and he handed the end of it to Dick. “Do you know how to read this?” he asked. 

“Yes,” he said surprising himself and then he looked back at the boy trying his best to see through him.

“Ask me anything.” he told Dick earnestly. 

Dick down and sat forward, “Why are you doing this?” he started. 

Tim looked at him like he wanted to say a lot of things right then, but he settled on, “Because you are my brother, and I miss you probably more than I have ever missed anything.” 

The papers few out at him and he grazed over them. He wasn’t lying. Dick sat back holding onto the paper, looking at him harder than he had before. Bruce had told him that he had two brothers, but that was all that he had said. He hadn’t told him if they were older or younger or anything about them, and he found suddenly that he wanted to know everything. “Does Bruce know that you are here?” 

Tim pursed his lips, “I didn’t tell him I was coming. But he most likely knows. Bruce is good at knowing things.” Another truth. Dick carried on. 

“You call him Bruce and not dad.” he pointed out. 

“He's never asked me to call him dad.” he told him easily. “He wanted me to be his ward, like you were before you left, but adopted me instead. He's Damian, our other brother's, father though. 

“Why did I leave?” That didn’t feel right. Why would he leave his family when it seemed like they were fairly close to each other. 

“You never told me.” Tim told him, for the first time looking a little sadly at him. “You said that you had another city to save and that there might have been too many birds flying around Gotham. You called though, all of the time. And made excuses to come by. You always said that it was for business but I always knew you were full of it and you missed us.” He grinned at that and it made Dick smile a little too. 

“Were we close?” he asked starting to relax a little more, letting the paper fall to the side of him. 

Tim noticed and perked up a little. “Yeah.” he told him with a little nod, “We were best friends. I mean we had our own best friends but it was different because we were brothers too.” He had to clear his throat before he continued, “I never stopped looking for you. I didn’t tell Bruce about it, but I looked through that building a hundred times. I ran scans and blasted holes and I never found you. And when I couldn’t find your body, or any piece of it I just thought…” And then he frown again, putting up a wall to block out his real emotions as he asked, “Do you remember...me at all?” he asked. 

Dick didn’t want to tell him no, so he didn’t really. He was honest. “I keep getting little pieces of things. I don’t know what triggers it or what they are exactly. I don’t even know if they are memories or just nice thoughts. Sometimes it’s just names or voices. And when I look at you,” Tim sat up a little bit, listening to Dick as if he were giving him a lecture, “I get a feeling like something heavy is sitting on my chest. It's like my body remembers but my mind doesn’t.” 

And he wasn’t sad anymore, he was curious, moving so that he was sitting at the edge of his seat. “Do you trust me when I say I would never hurt you? Intentionally.” he added remembering something that Dick obviously didn’t and the machine whirled the truth again. Dick nodded wondering why he was looking at him so seriously. How could he not believe him after he went through all this to prove he wouldn’t lie? Tim hesitated. “I know that you don’t want to… see Bruce right now.” Dick flinched at the thought and Tim continued past it, “But there are tools and devices that we have back home. Things that we could use to maybe help you recover some of yourself.” 

He was just so eager, pleading without pleading with Dick to let him try. And watching him, listening to him, Dick knew that he couldn’t say no. Not to Tim. “If I want to leave…” 

“I will take you anywhere you want to go. Just the two of us for however long you want.” 

The machine spat out more paper. He was telling the truth. 

“Okay.” 

-

The manor was larger than he had expected and that was even with him expecting a monster of a house. Clark was going to beam them in or something like that, but Tim insisted that it would be better if they didn’t enter through the cave, that Dick need a more normal approach to his old home. Wally offered to come along and Dick clung to him and Tim wishing that he actually had been holding on to the pair of them while the cab drove them right up to the front steps and left them. 

He could feel two sets of eyes watching him as he took the first couple of steps forward, a warm feeling in his chest starting to buzz around in an insane familiar way that he hadn’t been expecting. It was difficult to breathe but he sucked in as much air as his lungs could take as he took the few careful steps up to the front door and pulled them open quickly- like ripping off a bandaid. Everything inside felt awake even though it was almost midnight. All of the lights were on and the entrance was warm and welcoming, the smell of fruit and cinnamon coming from the right where he knew the kitchen- where he  _ knew _ the kitchen was. 

And he ran towards it, his heart pounding in his ears, cutting any sign of the other two out of the picture because he knew who would be in the kitchen. He knew there was only one person who nervously baked as he waited for them to come home, the face suddenly connecting with the name that he had known for a little over a month. 

He slammed the double doors open and Alfred looked up at him startled by the noise until he saw exactly who he was staring at. He dropped the pan he had been holding, ruining what had been perfect turnovers and he stared at him unable to move. “Master Dick?” he barely managed. 

Dick swallowed hard but the knot wouldn’t go down this time. “Alfred?” he asked. He needed it to be Alfred. And the man closed the distance hugging him too hard and so fast that Dick wasn’t sure if he just missed it because of the tears that wouldn’t stop pouring out of him- or is Alfred had become a speedster since he left. 

\---

It was Wednesday.

Alfred placed a simple bowl of oatmeal before him. He could hear Damian in the yard with Titus. Bruce let himself drift as he listened to his son coo at the dog in Arabic. He could almost pretend it was a normal morning. Tim was still asleep from staying up too late with the Titans on the west coast, Damian up earlier than anyone else even if he knew he didn't have to be, Alfred quietly moving through the kitchen. All of them moving around the empty chair at the table. A chair that had been empty more than occupied in the last ten years, but it didn't matter. 

“Master Tim spoke with him last night. He'll be coming to the manor this evening.” Alfred's voice was measured, but he could see the hope in his eyes. 

“Good,” he knew he should say more, but he couldn't decide on the right words. He couldn't tell the man that he'd remember him, he couldn't get his hopes up just for a quirk of the mind to dash them easily. He couldn't give a warning, because Dick had already remembered Alfred, a part of him at least. He looked at the man that had raised him, the man who had raised Dick, and was doing so much to ensure the two remaining Wayne's were growing into their potential. “You should make your apple turnovers. They are his favorite.” 

Alfred gave him a sad smile, a mere twitch of the lips.  “I just may. Your car will be arriving soon,” he reminded Bruce who looked out the kitchen window, Titus had knocked Damian down and was licking his face. Even though Damian was commanding him to stop the boy was laughing as he failed to push the behemoth canine off. 

“Has Damian spoken to him?” 

“He has not. He was there until Tim asked to speak with him. Then he came down to let me know,” Alfred said looking at the boy with a fond smile. The smile dropped into his default expression when he looked back to him. “Perhaps you should speak with him?” 

He nodded and set the paper aside as his phone alerted him that the car was there. 

-

He stopped for coffee as he did every day. He stepped in and his eyes searched for Dick. 

“He's not here today.” The barista smiled at him when he jerked. He forced a smile back. “I haven't seen him in a few weeks.” She was posed with her pen on his cup, he could see his name already written on it. 

“I haven't either,” he replied before he gave her his order and paid. He slipped a bill into the tip jar as he took his coffee. His eyes drifted back to the table in the back as he walked out. A headline on the newspaper stand caught his attention.  He handed over a few bills and folded the Daily Planet under his arm as he walked across to his office. 

‘ _Wayne and Luthor Joining Forces for Good?_ ’ He scoffed at the question. Clark was being bitter. He read the article the entire elevator ride. Most of the article was questioning Luthor’s intentions without crossing the line into slander. There were a few critiques of WE that he'd make a point to talk to Clark about. Once Clark gave up on his mission to keep him on the league. The article ended with a wary but hopeful statement. " _Bruce Wayne has always handled Business like an honest man. Maybe the tides are finally changing at LexCorp. I, for one, am interested to see how this plays out._ "  He thought about those words for the rest of the day. 

-

Damian was running laps in the cave. He watched him race up the stairs before descending balanced on the railings. He let him make a few laps before catching his attention. Damian slowed, chest heaving slightly. He wondered how long he had been down here. 

“I need to discuss something with you.” Damian nodded and stretched before joining him at the computer.  “How are you doing?” Damian gave him a withering look. He just looked back. He could see the moment when Damian decided to humor him. 

“I'm fine.”

“Alfred said you haven't talked to Dick.” Damian’s shoulders hunched a minuscule amount. If he hadn't been watching for a reaction he didn't know if he would have noticed it. “Damian?”

“Grayson doesn't remember me. He barely knew me.” Damian seemed bothered by that fact. He thought carefully of what to say, but Alfred interrupted them; dinner was ready. He placed his arm over Damian’s shoulder as they headed up the stairs. Damian tutted, but didn't push him off.

Bruce fought a grin at the disgruntled look on his face.  “You're his brother. He'll remember you eventually. And if he doesn't you'll just show him who you are now.” Damian looked up at him. His eyes narrowed as if searching for any deliberate misleading before nodding slightly. He could barely see the angry boy that had first come to the manor. He knew he was still there, he could see him as he brought out the child still buried within him. But more often than not, he looked at the teenager and saw how much more at ease he seemed to be with life. He rubbed his hair, just to irritate him as they entered the kitchen. 

-

Alfred looked happy the next morning. He knew that expression. The only one that had ever pulled that pleased smile from the butler was Dick. He hesitated at the door, he didn't want to disturb the peace as Alfred made Dick’s favorite breakfast. He could hear Titus barking at a squirrel in the yard. He retreated back into the hall and went looking for his youngest. Damian was on the top floor. He was curled into a wing back chair with a worn paperback. He recognized it as one of Jason's additions to the library. 

“Are you hiding?” he asked as he walked down the hall. 

Damian peered over the book before responding.  “I am staying out of the way.” 

He nodded and sat in the chair across the hall. He looked out the window next to them, overlooking the pond and the woods behind the manor. Dick had used to come up here when he was angry. He used to sit on the window and look out over the view. He had always sought out the highest ground when he wanted to get away. He looked back to Damian, an idea slowly coming together. 

Bruce stood and opened one of the doors halfway down the hall. It lead to one of the attic rooms. He pushed open the door, it creaked with disuse. Damian was at the bottom of the stairs, curiosity getting the better of him. He stepped into the room and flipped on the light. The single light bulb created deep shadows in the room. There were boxes stacked neatly along the wall. He could recognize the Haly’s Circus stamp from the door. He pulled the box down and opened it. The Grayson’s costumes were folded carefully. He ran his finger along the sequined feathers. He lifted the cloth carefully out and set it on an antique table. Beneath it was a photo album. He pulled it out and set the uniform back in the box. 

Damian was standing behind him, staring at the uniform, the symbol across its chest matching the one Dick had worn each night. He set the album on the table and opened it. The first photo was of Dick, barely smiling as he stood next to Bruce on the steps of the courthouse. Alfred had insisted on taking the picture after Dick was officially his ward. Neither one of them had wanted to pose. His own expression was tight. He turned the page. The next photos were mostly Dick on his first day of school. His first Christmas and birthday with them. Bruce turned the page and let the page fall. It was the photo he was looking for. 

Dick's first time in the costume. He stood with his fists on his hips, head high as he smiled brightly. It was the first time he'd seen him smile like that. Damian’s breath caught when he looked at the picture. The evidence sitting at the top of the manor. He turned the page. A few more pictures of Robin. Then came the change. 

Alfred had given Dick a camera for his birthday, the pages that followed were full of pictures the boy had taken. There was one of Alfred on his hands and knees cleaning something out of the frame. Another of Alfred from above. From the angle it looked like Dick had been in the chandelier in the foyer. There were a few of different places in the manor. The library. The kitchen. He turned the page and saw himself. He moved to turn, but Damian stopped his hand. 

In the first one he was asleep at his desk, head dumped back on his chair mouth open. The next he was frowning from the same chair and pointing directly at the camera. He could remember Dick's grin as he took another picture. 

There was one of the two of them, Dick grinning as he squeezed his face to him. He could see the amusement in his eyes. The last one he stood in front of his parents’ graves. His hand on the cool stone. He'd brought Dick in the hopes that he would go to talk to his own parents, but the boy had simply told him he talks to them every night and followed him through the cemetery. 

He turned the page. The pictures showed Dick growing up. Barbara and Wally spread throughout them. He paused at one of the boys in the batmobile. It was not the cave in the background. He flipped the pages. The Titans entered and more and more of the photos filled with Kori. 

He flipped the next. Another picture of the two of them. He was in the suit, his hair messy from the cowl. Dick still had his Nightwing suit and mask on. He was grinning wide as he took the picture arms draped over his shoulders so they were both in the shot. He was scowling, he'd been giving Dick a lecture about paying attention to his surroundings when he'd surprised him with the photo.

The next page had him stopping. Jason in the Robin costume. Jason was smiling and his eyes were looking over to Dick who was standing next to him. Dick was smiling, but his eyes were tense. He didn't remember that. Any time Dick had come over during that time they had fought. There were a few more pictures. He turned the page and saw Jason posing on top of the batmobile, he was wearing the bat cowl and cape. He had a grin and was winking at the camera. There were no pictures after that. 

Damian looked up at him. Bruce stared at the photo. Jason had died just three weeks after that. 

“What is this doing up here?” 

“Alfred put it away.” He knew the man had hidden it so that he wouldn't waste his days going through the pictures. He'd known where it was since it had been put away. He had come up to look at it, just to get a picture of Dick but hadn't been able to open the book. He took the album and motioned for Damian to go first. The boy headed down and he looked one last time at the boxes stacked against the wall. The second box drew his eyes before he turned off the light. 

He set the album on the kitchen table when Alfred had stepped out to feed Titus. He made sure that it would be seen. 

-

The night was quiet. An uneasy feeling settled in his bones as he watched the city settle in for the night. Below him a pair of officers were guiding a would be mugger into the patrol car while the couple the man had accosted stood by looking equally shaken and relieved. Robin landed next to him. He glanced over, the boy was looking down at the scene below. Damian settled, looking almost disappointed. 

“Let's head back.” He nudged Damian playfully before firing his line. He heard the squawk of outrage before hearing his grapple fire. They raced across the city. He landed in a roll, miscalculating his landing slightly. Damian dropped with a flourish a few feet in front of him. He had a wide grin on his face. 

Bruce chuckled as the boy fake cheered for himself. He reminded him so much of Dick in that moment. “Do you want to drive?” Damian froze in his victory dance. His eyes lit up and he snatched the keys out of the sky when he tossed it to him. They only had a few months before the boy could get his license and he'd be free in the city.

Damian stopped with a jerk, barely stopping before running into the guard. He ducked his head with a bashful grin. He just spun out of the car and pulled off the cowl. Damian slid into the chair and started his report. He sat at the terminal next to him and did the same. Damian finished and nudged him eyes sparkling with joy. 

“Would you like to spar?” he asked. 

Damian nodded.  “If you aren't too tired.” He could hear the ‘old man’ added silently in his son's mind. 

He finished his report and reset Tim's algorithm. Damian had already changed into loose clothes when he pushed away from the computer. He changed and headed for the gym. He had just walked through the door when Damian leapt at him, he barely managed to get his arms up to block. They moved around each other, Damian testing him every few cycles. He feinted, and Damian moved for the bait before spinning and landing a solid kick to his stomach. He caught his leg and turned, Damian dropped unexpectedly. He heard the pop and dropped to the ground as Damian let out a pained gasp. 

Bruce pulled up the leg of his pants and pressed at his knee. Damian hissed through his clenched teeth, a barely there thing. Just one year ago Damian hadn't allowed himself to show any of his pain. He looked at his son, who trusted him to not punish his ‘weakness’, and rose an eyebrow, fingers on the injured knee. Damian nodded and he straightened his leg until he felt it slide back in place. He pulled one of the towels on the wall down and wrapped it around his knee he placed Damian’s hands on the towel to hold it in place before heading for the medical bay. 

He set down the ice bag before unwrapping the knee and added the splint. Damian watched him as he worked. He rubbed over the last latch, smoothing it down. He set the ice pack on his knee.  “I think I won,” he teased. 

Damian scowled.  “I would have destroyed you if you hadn't given up.” Damian was already moving as if to stand. He pushed him back down and settled next to him. 

“Two weeks, “ he told him. Damian looked outraged. 

“I can go back out there tonight.”

“10 days.” 

“You'll need me tomorrow,” Damian looked at him, eyes a little wild.

“One week and you can drive for the rest of the month.”

“A whole month.” He met Damian’s eyes. 

“Deal. But it's the full two weeks if you go out before you're completely healed.” He stood and helped Damian to his feet. He picked the boy up before he could try to put any weight on his leg. He ignored the wails for him to be put down, that he wasn't a child, and headed up the stairs to the manor. Damian quieted as they stepped onto the main floor. He crossed his arms and glared straight ahead. 

He pulled the door shut and headed toward the stairs. They'd just hit the second floor landing when his heart jumped in his throat. Dick was looking at one of the paintings on the wall. He was in an old pair of his pajamas. He looked up and for a second looked like he was going to run when his eyes fell on Damian. 

“He's like your clone.” 

His fingers tightened where he was holding Damian. The boy looked up at him. “I get that a lot. I'm Damian. I _do_ know how to walk.” At that pointed comment Bruce put him down. Damian held onto his shoulder as he tested his leg. “I'm going to bed.” He gave his father a pointed look before hobbling down the hall. 

Bruce watched him until he turned the corner. When he turned back Dick was still staring down the hall with a frown on his face. 

“Are you okay?” 

Dick looked back to him. His eyes a mix of anger and fear. His heart sank. For all he relied on inspiring fear during the night he had no desire to see any of his family fear him. Dick looked back at the painting he'd been studying. It was a piece from the museum. In the reconstruction it had been damaged and he'd bought it, before they stored it in some vault.  “I've seen this before.” 

Bruce stepped closer. Taking in the painting of his grandmother's boy with his stoic expression and sorrowful eyes. He nodded. “It was at the museum. It got damaged, but I couldn't let it go.” 

He glanced over to Dick, who was still studying the painting with a frustrated expression. 

The silence stretched between them. He watched Dick as Dick appeared to be trying to reach the memories just out of reach. His eyes pleading for the boy before him to come alive and tell him all he wanted to know, all that was stolen from him. 

“Dick. I need to tell you something.” Dick looked over to him, his eyes still so scared. Bruce hesitated, stuttering over the words. “J-jay-” 

“Father! Arkham just reported a break out. They are not sure who got out. Drake is already suiting up.” He looked to Dick. “Stay here.” Dick nodded dully. 

Bruce grabbed Damian who was trying to hide his limp as he moved down the stairs. “Tonight, then a whole week.” He told him as he rushed through the manor. Damian headed for the med bay, and the numbing shots that they kept for emergencies. He checked in with Tim who was dressed and checking their gear while running scans of the city. He turned on his comm and heard Barbara coordinating with him. Damian stepped up, still pulling on his gloves. He looked to his knee and Damian nodded. 

“Move out.” 

\---

Dick watched them rush off wondering why he wanted to go with them. He wouldn't be able to help. He would be a hindrance more than a help to them, the way he had been to Jason when he took him out on missions. That's why he left Dick at home- and more strongly than he had ever felt before, Dick was angry about that. All Jason ever did was tell him that he had been this amazing fighter, an acrobat and a skilled mercenary. All of that had been bull shit, but he never understood why Jason was so eager to leave his training wheels on. 

And that photo album yesterday, it had been full of him, Bruce and him taking on the world together. He had been Robin. And then after that-

“Nightwing.” Tim had filled in for him through his coffee and pointed at the next page where he was grinning while holding onto Bruce's shoulders. He had been in his full costume and Bruce was half dressed, glaring at the camera like he was exhausted and annoyed. “Jason took this one _._ ” He told him and bile rose up his throat at the thought of his lying best friend, “You were teaching him how to be Robin and told him to take notes as you taught him to defuse Batman.” Dick flipped through the book a few times but mostly he was just flipping to get back to that picture. He took it when Tim wasn't looking. He knew that Alfred saw but he didn't say anything. 

He pulled out the picture now and stared at it, past Bruce to the masked man that was grinning up at him. This was who he was. This was who he was supposed to be. Maybe if he just followed his instincts… 

Dick let out a hard frustrated breath and looked around at the empty walkway. What would Nightwing do right now? He let his feet carry him down the stairs and off to the right into a small sitting room what had a baby grand piano and a bookcase. Why was he there- “Don't overthink it.” He told himself and sat down at the piano. He felt stupid. He pulled out the picture and looked at his stupid grinning face. How did he get back to this? He reached up to his hair, tied up at the top of his head and frown at the photo again. Then he rushed out of the room to the study where Alfred was putting up a few books that Tim had left on the table.

He tilted his head when he caught sight of Dick's uneasy look and put the books he was still holding back on the table. “Master Dick?” he asked after waiting gave way to mostly silence. 

Dick cleared his throat and tried not to feel embarrassed even though he wasn't sure why he should feel embarrassed in the first place. “Alfred, do you think you could help me with…” he touched his hair instead of saying it. 

Alfred smiled warmly at him and nodded. “I think we can take care of that easily.” He told him and led him to the bathroom down the hall. 

-

He stared at himself in the mirror when Alfred finished. It hadn't taken very long, but he felt like there was a completely different person staring back at him. Dick Grayson was in the mirror, bright eyed and ready to take on the world- but the Richard in the bathroom wasn't so sure. His scars were so exposed that he felt as though he had never seen them before, bright white and knotted up his side like a map to the self he had lost, but didn't know how to follow. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel or how he had expected to, but whatever it was- it hadn't been this. 

Alfred put a hand on his shoulder, understanding everything he was thinking without needing to be told like he always did. Dick was so grateful to have him. To have at least one piece of his mind that felt almost full. He just wished that there were more. “I'll go make us some tea.” He told him softly and headed out the door with his little bag full of Dick's hair and the clippers under his arm. He was glad to have the moment alone but he didn't want to linger. There was too much to think about and that made him not want to think at all, so he followed Alfred downstairs. 

What he saw when he got there was not Alfred. A girl with fire red hair was staring at him from a wheelchair, looking like she had seen a ghost in the flesh. She looked like she wanted to say a thousand things but she pushed whatever it was to the side and set her shoulders straight as she rolled over to him. “Barbara?” he said the name coming to him just like Alfred's had, no memory attached, he just knew. 

For a brief second pain flashed over her face and she nodded but pushed it off again. “Dick, Bruce and the boys are in trouble. They need help. Help that I can't give them,” she said in frustration slamming her hands against her chair and letting out a hard breath. 

Dick grabbed her hand before she could do it again. “What do you need?” he asked. He didn't even think about it. “What can I do?”

She clutched his hand and jutted her chair forwards towards the room with the piano. “Come with me.” 

He followed her through the room to the piano where she tapped out a small melody that opened the bookcase to them. He blinked but she didn't stop. She turned back to him and lifted her arms to him, waiting expectantly. He understood, picking her up and holding onto the exposed pole with his free arm, taking a breath before he dropped them both into darkness. And he knew where they were. The cave came to life at the feel of them, lights coming up as his feet hit the ground and he carried Barbara over to the computer to set her down. “You still know how to fight?” she asked already tapping away at the computer. 

He winced trying not to let that offend him. “Yes.” He grumbled. 

She nodded and spun to look at him as the sound of compressed air released, “Good,” she pointed him to the case she had opened. “Get dressed.” She commanded and went back to the computer. He pulled the suit off the mannequin and hesitated. He didn't know if he should be wearing this. It felt like it wasn't his to put on, but Barbara was impatient. “If you are worried about your modesty, that ship has long since sailed.” She smirked at him but her eyes were still tense when she saw it was more than that for him. “I know you're scared, but I know you Dick. I know you can do this and your family needs help. What are you going to do about it?” 

He got dressed as quickly as he could but left the mask off as he made his way back over to the computer. Barbara was tracking something, she glanced his way as she waited for the target to lock. “You look good.” She told him appreciatively and he felt his neck go hot as he focused on the screen. “Here.” She handed him a small earpiece and then stuck them in at the same time. “Don't even think about taking it out.” She warned him and nodded to the armory, “Your stick things are over there.” She told him like she thought they were stupid. 

“Escrima sticks.” She raised an eyebrow at him. This was an argument they had had before. He grabbed the sticks off the rack and placed them instinctively on his back. “Did you find them?”

“It looks like they are still at Arkham. They are holding it off at the front but they keep getting pushed back. Their comms are dead and they are too spread apart.” and when she looked at Dick this time, her confidence wavered. “Lay low. And don't call attention to yourself.” She warned him. “I'm not positive who got loose but all battles are best won smart, not hard fought.” 

Dick nodded. “How do I get there?” he asked looking around. There wasn't a car in sight and he was pretty sure that he couldn't get in a cab like this. 

“Your bike is in the back.” She told him pointing to the far end of the cave. He started running that way and she call after him, “Don't do anything stupid!”

-

The roads were surprisingly clear, but after thinking about it he was positive that the police would have told everyone to stay in doors while they felt with the outbreak. He parked his bike three blocks down from the asylum in an alleyway and took to the rooftops trying to see how far into the city they had managed to travel. They were only about two blocks in but it was obvious that the police were focusing too much in the actual asylum to notice the few that had managed to get by. 

He ran into Damian first, the bat clone. He was holding a sword to his front like a knight, circling the largest man he had ever seen. The contrast between the two of them was startling and he watched as the giant smacked the sword out of the boy's hand when his knee kept him from moving fast enough. Then he moved. Rage burned in his chest as he dived off the building and landed with his foot striking hard down on the monster's head. He whipped out his escrima sticks and charged them, plowing them up under his ribs when he struggled back to his feet. “That's my little brother you asshat,” he shouted, spinning another kick to the side of his head and slammed both sticks down on his ear and hit shock. He stayed down. 

Dick turned to Damian, looking him over thirstily. “Are you okay?” he demanded the last time that he had seen him he’d… Dick swallowed hard on the memory that was coming up his throat and really looked at his little brother. The kid he had been so jealous of because he had a claim to everything he had wanted free of complicated feelings. The boy who had been so hard but loved to watch romcoms with him when no one else was around. The boy he had let literally fall through his fingers, standing on his own a mature teenager, who did teenager things. He forced a grin and looked at him like he had never really seen Damian before and for all intents and purposes he guessed that he hadn't. “You grew up without me.” He accused him, voice cracking hard on the last word. 

Damian caught his breath, his mouth hard but his eyes full of longing and hurt and too many things to say. He took two hard steps forward but a boom came knocked the bricks off the building next to them and Dick shoved him back. “Go to Tim. I'll find Bruce.” Damian nodded and whipped out his launcher aiming high and Dick sprinted down the alley and launched himself up the walls to the roof that was in the direct path of Arkham Asylum. 

He ran hard across buildings and tapped his comm. “Where is he Barbara?” he asked. 

“ _ Dead ahead. In the lobby. _ ” She called back loud and clear. 

“I hope that's just a figure of speech.” He grunted and ran harder. He found Bruce in the center of a garden- if you took that garden out of the little shop of horrors. Ivy was laughing as she launched her children at Bruce who was just barely keeping up with her attacks. He launched a flash bomb at her but she blocked it with a vine that was too thick to catch fire. 

“Succumb to my children, Batman.” She cooed at him, shooting another vine in his direction, this time it was a direct hit. “Let them feed from you.” She stepped closer, trailing a finger up Bruce's chin, pointing his face upward. “Let me devour you.” She grinned at him appreciatively, leaning closer. 

That was enough. Dick fell over the side of the building silently and stuck the end of his escrima stick at back of her neck, right under her head. “Get in line lady,” he told her and set his shock to high. The vines fell with her, leaving Bruce to stare up at him. He gave him a shit eating grin and squared down to his level, adrenaline filling him to the brink of elation. “And you wanted to leave me at home.” He accused him almost laughing when lightning cracked across the sky and Dick froze.

Whatever zone or state of mind he had just been in was shocked out of him and he was left staring at the shadow of his worst nightmares. 

He jumped up and away from Bruce quickly, stumbling over one of the fallen vines in his retreat. He turned away from the batman trying to tell himself that it was Bruce. Bruce was him. He would not hurt Dick. But the memory of a sharp pain cracked across his skin and he started running back to the mouth of the lobby horrified and frustrated and longing for the easy way that he had just moved, instinct giving way to memory that was just… gone now. He needed to hit something. He needed to hit a lot of things. 

-

Nightwing landed behind Ivy silently. Bruce grit his teeth as the shock went through the woman and the vines tightened briefly before he fell to the ground. Dick smiled at him as he offered a hand. It was his Dick smiling at him. His Dick mocking him. He reached for his hand, heart hammering in his chest from more than the adrenaline of the fight. And in a flash _He_ was gone. The joy and excitement was gone, fear filled his eyes as he scrambled away from him. He sat there for a few seconds, adding another strip of tape to the wall around his heart. 

“How did I never notice?” Ivy’s voice was low. He met her eyes and saw pity. He climbed to his feet and pulled her up. She didn't fight back, groaning as he yanked her toward the cell block. He adjusted his hold when they got to the first gate. She shifted and leaned against him. “I could whip something up for you,” her breath was hot against his ear. He grabbed her and pushed her through the door. “You know where I'll be,” said with a mischievous grin. He shut the door as the guards took Ivy. 

-

Damian was leaning against the batmobile when he got back. His lip was bleeding but he had a small smile on his face. He didn't look for the other two. “They headed back already,” Damian said as he opened the door. “What took you so long?” 

“I had to know that he was still in his cell.” Damian nodded eyes on the streets as they passed. “Your knee?” He asked when he caught him holding it. Damian just grunted at him. He took that as acknowledgement of the pain. 

When they pulled in he nudged Damian toward the stairs. “Get off that leg.” Damian grumbled but hobbled up to the manor. Both Tim and Dick’s suits were in their cases. He took his time changing and showering. Exhaustion settling in his bones as the water beat down. He pulled on the oversized shirt he'd gotten for Christmas the year before that he kept in the cave for nights like this. Barbara was sitting at the computer when he walked out. She spun to look at him. He watched her read the shirt and raise an eyebrow. “Tim.” He mumbled and sat down next to her. She quirked a smile at him. He started his report and she watched him for a few minutes. 

“The comms went down.” she said pointedly. 

“Interference.” he'd heard a bout of garbled static before silence. 

“Yes and no. The Titans were trying to contact Tim. He changed something. One tiny code and the whole system crashed.” She had already told Tim, he knew that. She was making sure he knew. “I fixed it. Wasn't hard.” she peered at him. “Communication is _important._ ” 

He stopped typing and sighed. “He doesn't want to talk to me. You didn't see him tonight.” 

Barbara pulled up a video feed. “I did.” Damian was fighting Bane. He could see the way he favored his injured leg, he could see Bane targeting it as often as he could. Bruce gripped the desk as Damian’s sword clattered to the ground and Bane reached for him. A flash of blue streaked through the picture. Each hit precise until Bane collapsed to the ground. “What was it you asked me? ‘Why’?” he winced. “Well I'm asking you now - _why not_?” he hesitated. “Nope. Not quick enough. Find a way. Talk to him. He needs you as much as you clearly need him, even if you refuse to see that.” She shut down the bank of computers with a quick clatter of keys. “Now take me back upstairs. Dick forgot to bring my chair. My fault I guess.” she shrugged and let him lift her. 

They were silent as he walked up the stairs and to the parlor.  “It's late. You could stay.” 

She shook her head. “Helena is on her way. I'll lock you out of the cave if you don't talk to him.” She raised an eyebrow at him as if to say she'd be watching while she wheeled down the hall. 

-

Bruce stopped outside the kitchen. He could hear laughter drifting from the room.

“And then the cake exploded. Purple icing went everywhere. Bruce's face was priceless. I have a picture of it somewhere. Don't tell him though. He destroyed the copy I showed him. It was the best birthday I'd had.” he listened to Tim's faint chuckles. 

“You have to show me,” Dick said his voice filled with laughter. He stepped back as Damian spoke up. He let the boys enjoy their breakfast. 

-

**DW:** Pennyworth was disappointed you didn't make it to breakfast, he made those awful egg things you enjoy.

**BW:** I am sorry I missed them. 

**DW:** Grayson made me eat yours. He is worse than before he left.

**DW:** He asked if you were coming. 

**BW:** I have early meetings all week. I don't think I'll make it to breakfast. 

He accepted a few of the requests he had on his calendar so he wasn't lying. Damian didn't respond, hopefully he was bored out of his mind in class. 

**BW:** J’onn wants to talk with Dick. 

**TD:** Then tell Dick that. I'm not your messenger. 

**TD:** Also, I'm busy right now. Don't yell at me. 

Bruce sighed. When J’onn had called he'd immediately wanted to call Dick and tell him the good news, but he'd paused and texted Tim, who could buffer between them. But that had failed. 

**BW:** J’onn, you met him on the statrion, would like to talk to you. He thinks he can help. 

**DG:** I'm at the store with Alfred. We'll be back in an hour. 

**BW:** I'll let him know. 

He went back to work. His eyes drifting to his phone every few minutes. Barbara had said find a way. 

**BW:** I know you can't trust me right now, but you can trust the League. 

Then a few minutes later. 

**BW:** Luthor came in for a meeting earlier. I wish you had let me sock him. 

**BW:** Just one punch. 

**BW:** I've punched him before. But my bare knuckles hitting his jaw would be so much more rewarding. 

He sat through his next meeting wondering if he'd get a response. 

\---

Dick stared at his phone and the message that kept running further up his phone. He wanted to text him back, but what was he supposed to say? He leaned over the push bar of the basket and started three times but none of them sounded right so he clicked off his phone screen and shoved it into his pocket as Alfred came back up the aisle with a fresh loaf of bread. “ Is something on your mind, Master Dick?” he asked looking like he already knew but would wait for Dick to be ready to tell him.

He squinched up his face and Alfred smiled knowingly as Dick told him. “J'onn is going to meet us back at the manor.” He told him, pushing the cart after him as he moved down the shopping list. A woman and her son passing by stared at him, with his hair gone and no scarf his scars were fully exposed. He ignored them and pushed on. 

“I see,” Alfred nodded looking at the shelf in front of him and rolling a few tomatoes in his hand. “And you are not looking forward to seeing him.” it wasn't a question. 

Dick chewed on that for a minute. “I don't want him to mess with my mind.” He admitted. “How will I know if he's pulling out memories or if he's just putting things there.” 

Alfred stopped messing with the tomatoes and looked at him. “Master Wayne, would not allow anyone to hurt you.” He told him so sincerely that he wanted to believe that. “He loves you so dearly, Master Dick, more than he has ever known how to say. And that kind of love is no small thing.” He told him patting Dick’s cheek until he forced a smile out of him and went back to the tomatoes. 

**DG:** Alfred has been rolling tomatoes for 10 minutes. I'm not sure if I should tell him that I hate tomatoes or just suck it up. 

He hit send before he could think about it and fell into an easy silence with Alfred, trying not to think too much about who would be waiting for him when they got home. 

\- 

Tim was already in the study with J’onn when they got home and Dick insisted on helping Alfred put up the groceries despite his constant attempts to shoo him away. Only when he couldn't put it off anymore did he head up the the study, not at all surprised to see that in the time he spent in the kitchen, Bruce and Damian had shown up as well. As soon as he entered Damian came to stand behind him, it was an oddly comforting gesture even though he wasn't exactly sure why. J’onn was in his normal form, no need to hide from the four of them but Dick wished that he had wanted to be more inconspicuous. “Richard.” He said in a studied way, too careful and too friendly. “Thank you for letting me see you.” 

Dick swallowed hard and nodded at him. Bruce stood up from his place behind the desk and approached Dick slowly, giving him the chance to move away. He grit his teeth and waited, not looking him directly in the eye. Bruce stopped in front of him looking like he wanted to reach out but he held off. “This only goes as far as you want it to.” He told him under his breath. “If you want to stop-” he didn't finish but Dick nodded understanding what he was saying. 

“Please,” J’onn cut in standing too close to him but he didn't show any sign of being startled. “Take a seat.” He waved to the chair in front if the desk and Dick took a second before complying. Bruce and the boys moved back to where they had been when he entered not staring at him but at J’onn. Dick jumped when he put a hand on his shoulder and looked to him as well. “Richard.” He began. “I want you to start by closing your eyes.” He said softly. 

Dick looked at Tim who nodded quickly and he let them shut, trying to quell the small panic he felt blooming in his chest. “Good. Now, Richard, is it alright if I ask you some questions?” 

“Yes.” He muttered quickly not thinking about it. 

“Can you tell me the name of your father?” 

Dick creased his brow. He had read his name in the paper that Jason had stolen, but when J’onn asked, he could hear his father's name being called from far away. From a tent off the ring where his mother was calling to him for supper. His heart fluttered and he hitched his breath. “John Grayson.” He licked his lips, his mouth feeling dry. 

“And your mother?” he asked. 

“Maria.” He whispered seeing her beautiful face flash in front of him. She had always been so small. She told him when he was little that he was going to shoot up past her too soon. But he never got the chance to get that tall while she was alive.

“Tell me about them.” J’onn prompted and at that, Dick felt himself fall away, feathered by his voice. 

“They were acrobats.” he told him. “People called us gypsies because we wanted to live a free life. My mom wanted me to go to school, she didn't want people to hurt me the way they had hurt her, but my father insisted that we were a team. More than a family, we were always a team.” He swallowed again, his throat feeling very dry, “I don't think we were a team.” 

“Why is that?” J’onn asked. 

“My father made all of the decisions.” He said simply, “My mother and I did what he told us to.”

“Surely every team needs a leader.” 

“A leader guides not commands. A team is still free to make decisions.” Bruce had told him that. He had lead the Titans that way, or at least he had tried to. “I've been part of a lot of teams.” 

“And a lot of families.” Someone added. Not J’onn. But he couldn't place it. 

Dick grinned at that, “Yeah.”

“Who is in your other family?” J’onn asked. 

Rich frown, suddenly having to concentrate, “Alfred. And Bruce mostly. After that there was Jay…” he stopped. And they let him sit in silence for a moment.

“What do you know about Jason Todd?” 

“He's dead.” Dick said quickly but then stopped, the image of a man in a suit standing in an open window, stealing Dick’s mask with a kiss. “No, he…” his breath hitched again and he saw himself waking up tied to a post, Tim and Damian tied next to him. There was a bomb and- 

Pain ripped over his skin and his hand shot up to claw at it, a shout ripping through him as the ceiling fell in around him- the pole had been attached to crumbling with it and pinning his arm to the ground while his skin tried to crawl off of him.

“Stop.” It was Bruce he could hear him yelling. “ _Stop!_ ” he said louder now. 

“I am not doing this.” J’onn said grimly. “He is remembering.”

Dick had tried to crawl away from the pain, to unpin himself but he still had his hands chained. He didn't know how long he had been lying there. He couldn't feel anything but pain, calling for Bruce to come back. He was still alive. He was still there. He didn't want to die like this. He waited and shouted until he couldn't anymore. And just when he knew that he was going to die-

Jason found him. 

“Dick.” his eyes opened to Bruce leaning over him where he was curled up on the floor holding the broken side of his body that had long since been healed. _Bruce_. Dick grabbed at him and pulled himself up, holding him too tightly to him. He smelled just like he had the last time he had seen him, like cotton and aftershave and Bruce. His vision was spotting, pain still sharp in his neck and chest. “Just breathe.” He told him and Dick did, or he tried too. But it wasn't enough to keep him from fading out. 

“His mind rests,” J’onn said softly. Bruce gathered Dick into his arms. Once he had him securely in his arms he stood careful not to jostle him. The door opened as he reached it. He nodded to the Martian before stepping through. Alfred was standing just outside the door. He'd rushed in as soon as the screaming had started and pulled the Robins from the room. Tim jumped to his feet. Damian looked up from where he was sitting, knees to his chest against the wall opposite the door. 

“He's sleeping,” he said softly. Alfred turned toward the stairs. He followed him to the guest bedroom they had set Dick up in. He'd expected Alfred to have put him in his old bedroom. Dick sunk into the bed and curled in on himself as he pulled the covers over him. He stepped back brushing back a stray strand of hair. There were scratch marks on Dick’s neck where he'd clawed at himself lost in his memories. He touched the scarred skin carefully. Dick caught his fingers. He looked up, but he was still asleep. He stepped back, but Dick’s grip tightened. 

“Master Bruce,” he looked back and Alfred was moving a chair next to the bed. He sat down, holding on to Dick’s hand. Alfred's hand settled on his shoulder, a rare display of affection. “I will bring your dinner up.” 

He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Dick's voice echoed in his mind. His desperate broken pleas. He rubbed his thumb against the soft skin of his hand, eyes burning. 

“Bruce?” he lifted his head and looked at Tim who was holding a tray in his hands. He hadn't realized he'd been sitting for that long. “You should eat.” He motioned Tim forward. He put the tray on the desk and stepped closer. 

“Here. I shouldn't be the first thing he sees when he wakes up.” he took Dick’s hand and placed it in Tim's sliding away from them. Tim hesitated, eyes searching his face. He nodded and sat down. He took the tray as he left. 

He sat the tray down on his bed and sank down to the floor. His breaths left his lungs in shaky bursts as he let go. He stared at his hands in his lap. They blurred as he folded them into fists. 


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

 

Alfred let him know that Damian was with Dick when he woke the next day. He walked around outside trying to clear his head. Titus followed his every step. He'd had bad dreams. They weren't quite the nightmares that haunted him, but he'd woken up thinking about fire and blood on his hands. For the first time in 704 days he'd rolled up and out of bed. He didn't trust his thoughts. Even as he walked he could hear Dick's raw cracked voice calling for him. He turned back one they reached the edge of the lake. 

“Master Timothy wanted to speak with you,” Alfred said and handed him a smoothie when he walked back in. He turned toward the cave. “I believe he is reading in the library.” Alfred all but smiled at him when he corrected to the main stairs. 

Tim was not in the library. The stack of books, his father's books, sat on a table by one of the couches. Dick was curled up on the couch. He was reading one of the books he was pretty sure Dick had brought with him. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled when Dick startled and looked up at him. “I was looking for Tim.” 

“He's in his room. Conner called?” Dick looked unsure like he wasn't sure that was the right name. 

He hummed and looked over to Dick. “How are you?” he asked. He was painfully aware of how awkward he was being. He felt like he had when Dick had first come to live with him. He hadn't known how to talk to him. But Alfred had insisted he bond with him so there had been a lot of conversations like this one.  

Dick studied him as he straightened the stack of books on the table. Tim had been going through any book involving memory. They needed to talk. “I'm good. Nightwinging it.” 

“That's… Good. I should go and let you read.”

“Bruce.” He paused on his way back to the door. “Tell me about your parents.” 

“What do you want to know?” his voice was flat, but he couldn't speak any other way. 

“What were they like?” 

“Happy.” he said offhandedly, circling slowly back into the room before he sat down on the couch across the room. Dick was still watching him, not impressed by his answer. “They worked a lot.” Bruce looked at the books, generations of his family filling the library. “My father had his practice, my mother spent more time with the board than people knew.” He looked over to Dick. “They weren't always home.” He looked back to the books. “My father was reserved. It was how he'd been raised. It's how he was raising me. He used to work in here. If he was in here I'd sneak in and lay in front of the fire. Sometimes if he knew I was there he'd read out loud. I would fall asleep to his voice. I had no idea what he was saying, but I liked the noise.”

“Is that why you read to me?” Dick had put his book down and was looking at him. 

“You didn't like the quiet. You said there was always something happening at the circus. There was always noise. So I read to you until you fell asleep.” 

“And your mother?” Dick asked after a few minutes. 

“I loved my mother. We talked about everything. I was just a child, so we mostly talked about my classmates and teachers, but to me it was everything.” 

“What about us?” he followed Dick’s line of sight. But saw nothing that could be causing the look on his face. “Were we happy?” 

“At times.” Dick's hand was rubbing the edge of something in his pocket. “You were a happy child. But you grew up. I wasn't ready for what that meant and I could have handled it better.” he met Dick's eyes. “I got angry. I told you that I didn't need a partner. It was a lie.” he laughed, bitter on his tongue. “I barely waited until you were out of Gotham before I took Jason in.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose laying his head back against the wave of emotion pressing on him. “I think you were happy. You just weren't happy with me.” 

“And you?” he could feel Dick's eyes on him. 

“I'm always happiest when you're with me.” Bruce let his eyes swing down to look at Dick. “Even when we're fighting.”

-

“You fought all of the time.” Damian told him in a grunt, blocking a kick and grabbing Dick's foot to yank him closer. “If you weren't fighting, then you guys found a way to keep fighting. Or you went and fought something else.” He gasped when Dick turned out of the hold and pinned him to the wall. “It was too quiet when you were gone. I think that's what made it worse for father.” 

“But we fought.” Dick breathed heavily and got back into their starting stance. 

“Yeah you fought.” Damian rolled his eyes. “You told me it was because you  _ cared, _ ” he quoted at him in disgust before he jumped at him again. 

-

“Master Bruce has always cared very much for you.” Alfred nodded as he polished the glasses he pulled out of the washer and placed them neatly in the cabinet behind him. “He cares for  _ all _ of you boys very much.” he pursed his lips and took off his reading glasses as he set his towel down on the counter. “But it was always different with you.” 

Dick swallowed, mind jumping back to their first meeting in his office and the kiss. His face heated up. “Why was I different?” he asked almost afraid as his heart started racing. 

Alfred considered that for a moment. “Well, you were his first.” But even as he said it, the man shook his head and when he spoke next it was with a real earnesty. “Master Bruce was not in a good way when you came into his life. He saw in you, the same tragedy that was in him- and through that he thought that he could sculpt you. Make you the man that he had hoped to someday become.” A small smile snuck up around the corners of his mouth. “It did not take him long to figure out that you would not be sculpted to be anyone but yourself.” 

He watched as Alfred picked his towel backup and put his glasses on, continuing his abandoned task to give Dick a private moment to place everything together. “Was he disappointed?” Dick asked finally. Making the butler stop once more to fix him with his knowing eyes. “With who I became?”

“On the contrary, Master Dick.” Alfred smiled, wider this time as he pat the hand he had on the counter, “You turned out much better than either of us ever hoped. “

-

“You were the best of us.” Tim told him with nothing but honestly in his tone. No resentment and no jealousy at the statement. “At least to Bruce.” he added with a smirk and laughed at the smack Dick left on his shoulder. “Everything was always ‘ _ Dick would have done it this way, _ ’ or ‘ _ If Dick were here- _ ’” his impression of Bruce was impeccable but Dick had come to expect nothing less from Tim. 

“But you can do…” he looked around at the computer that Tim was halfway inside, piecing it together. At least he thought it was a computer? Dick shook his head. “All of this.” he settled when he couldn't figure out what to call it. “Surely I couldn't do any of this. Even when I remembered.” 

Tim sat back months lip of the machine and thought on that. “Well… no.” he admitted. And then he smile at Dick. A huge, skin cracking grin. “But I don't think that your  _ usefulness _ , though don't get me wrong you are great to have in a pinch, is exactly what he was missing.” 

“What do you mean?”

-

“You were totally head over heels for Bats.” Wally told him, through a mouthful of pastrami and provolone. “I mean you never said that you were or anything,” he added when Dick went red again. “But you talked about him all of the time. In an unhealthy obsessive kind of way. You were always the most confident guy in the world until Bruce crashed the party and then you would sink to the floor and fall back in line.” He made a face at Dick. “Honestly, we were all kind of surprised when you went out on your own.”

“All?” Dick asked staring at the table and wondering who else he'd have to duck his head around. 

“Just the Titans. Me, You, Roy, Dona, Kori- Well, all of us.” Wally shrugged and twirled his head to say there was more. “You were always so proud to be Robin and then one day you just decided you couldn't take it anymore and…” he frown, “You changed your name. You got your own city. You did everything that you could to stay away from B and Gotham.”

“And how does that mean I was in love with him?” Dick asked confused. 

“You didn't mention him.” Wally said. “You didn't talk about him really at all. Donna would talk about Diana and I would talk about Barry- but if Bruce came up you would just…” he trailed off, peeling his eyes off to table and back up to Dick. He smiled apologetically. “But maybe I was just looking too far into it. You had girlfriends, lots of them! Hell you dated Kori- arguably the hottest girl in the galaxy. So I guess the only person who would really know about any of that is… you.”

-

Dick knocked awkwardly on the door of the homey, Metropolis apartment wondering why his heart of trying to beat his knuckles to the door. He heard shuffling behind the door and man called for a minute before the door opened to the tall man with large glasses from his dream. Clark Kent. Freaking Superman! “Dick?” Clark asked both surprised and pleased, looking over his shoulder to see if there was anyone behind him. 

“It's just me.” he told him, in a higher voice than he intended. He swallowed and cleared his throat, “Can I come in?” he asked in a lower tone. 

A smile played around Clark’s mouth as he focused on not laughing at him but he nodded and pushed the door further open, “Please,” he offered kindly and shut the door behind them. 

Clark’s apartment was nothing like Dick had thought it would be. He'd read the comic books. He'd heard what people said about Superman, flying high over Metropolis but staying in solitude in an ice cave. Dick looked at the stacks of books on the worn coffee table, a laptop open at the small kitchen table surrounded by papers the latest copy of the news. Of course Dick knew that it would be stupid for anyone to live in a cave of ice, but still- “Is it weird that I'm disappointed?” he asked after a minute of silence. 

But Clark laughed and relief surged through Dick’s chest unable to help but smile too. “You were expecting the Fortress of Solitude.”

“Hoping. But not expecting.” he smirked. 

“Coffee?” he asked and started to the kitchen when Dick nodded, his nerves starting to come back to him as he leaned over the counter to watch him fill the maker. “Something tells me this isn't a personal visit.” Clark started when the water started running. “Not that I mind. I'm always happy to see you. We were… friends.” Dick tried not to let that please him too much. He had been friends with Superman. Then Clark smiled sadly, his eyes flicking to the scarred skin of Dick's neck. His hand went up to his scar on a reflex before he noticed and forced it back down. He didn't want to think about that. 

“I'm trying to piece things together,” Dick admitted to the man. “I've talked to the family, and some of my friends. They all seem to think that there was…” he flushed, “...something between Bruce and myself. More than just a partnership. Something else.” He swallowed and stared down at the countertop, trying to forget that Clark could literally see through him. “J’onn went into my mind. He asked me about my parents and my family. There is love there. Love for all of them. But with Bruce its…” he sighed and looked back up at Clark. “confusing.” 

Clark wanted to say something. Dick could see that, but he just waited as Clark poured him a mug and slid it over to him. “You and Bruce have always had a very complicated relationship.” Clark told him. Slowly. Like he wasn't sure if it was okay to talk about it. “You were never his child and he was never your father. But there were certain expectations there. A tether that kept you coming back to each other like some kind of unspoken rule.” 

Bright blue eyes met his, and Dick forgot about the coffee or that he was talking to Superman. He focused on Clark, asking him to continue without using so many words. “Bruce Wayne is the most selfless person I have ever met. He is also the most hard headed. He gave all of himself to you, Dick, knowing that eventually you would grow up and become your own man. But when it was time to let you go, even though he told you it was time and he wanted that for you so badly- he couldn't.”

Dick blinked at him. “He couldn't?” 

“Bruce never intended to love you.” Clark told him. “Not as a son. Not as anything. He took you in because he knew your pain. Because he wanted to help you- but then you helped  _ him _ instead.” He smirked, “You brought a light into that house. A light he didn't want. A light that scared him. And that fear, the fear of losing you, it was just another reason for him to hate himself for loving you.” 

\---

He tried to give Dick his space after their run-in in the library. Alfred and Tim looked disappointed in him when Bruce skipped a few breakfasts with a meeting excuse. They hadn’t seen Dick’s reaction to the Bat. They didn’t see his eyes widen with fear any time he walked in a room unannounced. So he avoided the kitchen and spent most of his time in the cave. 

Some mornings he took Damian to school. The first time he’d done it Damian had looked at him like he was trying to figure out who had replaced his father. Now Damian just grabbed his bag when he stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. The more they rode together the more Damian talked. He complained about his classmates, but there was a way that he complained about a few of them that read fond. It was the same way he complained about ‘Drake’. 

Damian waved at a boy who was waving vigorously at him. When Damian realized he hadn’t immediately driven away he looked back and shot him a look. It was then that he realized it had been a few months since he’d last gotten a call from the school about Damian skipping class or talking back to the teachers. He grinned and started working on the specs for a new gadget Lucius could whip up for him. 

-

Tim was standing at the isolation room door when he got home from work. His heart skipped a beat, before he calmed the fear that streaked through his veins. The door was still shut, he would have been notified if it had opened. 

“Tim?” he called. The young man turned to him, a lopsided grin on his face. “What are you doing?” 

“I was just watching him refuse to eat. What is the end game with this?” He motioned to the door as he stepped away. “You can't keep him locked in there forever and Arkham would be like putting him in a cat carrier.” His face twitched at the image and Tim's grin grew. 

“I don't know. I need to tell Dick he's down here though.”  

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” Tim asked moving the computer he'd been tinkering with off and on for the last week from the main computer console to one of the work tables. 

“Do you think hiding the fact that the man who tried to kill him and held him hostage for two years is in our basement is a good idea?” 

“Yeah… You're right.” Tim hopped up on one of the tables. “So I've been meaning to talk to you about something.” He could see his nerves in the way Tim fiddled with the edge of his shirt sleeve. 

“Did Clark tell you about his nomination?” Tim looked up, his eyes flashing in anger.

“You knew? Did you tell him to nominate me?” 

“No,” he replied flatly. Tim's anger deflated as quickly as it had risen.

“Sorry. It’s just… I wanted your advice. I don't know what to do.”

“This is not a decision I can make for you. I am proud of the man you've become. You are a good leader, detective, and you would be a great addition to the league. I will support whatever decision you make.” Tim just blinked at him for a few seconds, then croaked out a quiet ‘Thanks Bruce’ and headed for the stairs to the manor. 

-

Clark stopped by the morning of the nomination meeting, the meeting where he’d make his announcement that he would no longer be part of the Justice League. He could see that Clark was happy in the way that he floated through the cave, gravity unable to hold the Superman down. It immediately set his teeth on edge. It always had. There was just something about the ease of his happiness that bothered him. Maybe it was that happiness had never come easily for him. He’d always had to work for even a few moments. 

“Dick is still here,” Clark said. He grunted his answer and continued breaking down the motor on Tim’s spare bike. He’d been complaining that it kept slipping gears. “The boys seemed happier when I spoke to them.” He paused with the wrench on the bolt above him. His eyes moved to the red toes of his boots barely hovering above the ground. 

“Do they?” he asked. Damian had been a little more eager to talk the last few weeks, he’d gone on for the entire ride to school the other day about sparring with Dick. Tim’s happiness was always hard to pin down. The boy was even more wary of good moments than himself. He did seem quicker to joke and laugh than he had been. 

“If you’d like you can nominate Tim. He’d appreciate it more coming from you.” He slid out from under the bike stand and sat up. Clark floated back so he wasn’t straining to meet his eyes. 

“Nothing has changed Clark. I’m still leaving the league. For the last time, I am not changing my mind. Why can’t you let it go?” 

“Because it feels like you’re giving up!” Clark snapped. His eyes sparked red for a second before he reigned his anger in.

-

The meeting was awkward. Clark had stormed out of the cave and refused to look at him when he walked in. Everyone seemed to sense the trouble between them. Diana was upset. She watched him with a tiny spark of hope until he asked for the table after the nominations had been announced. They still had to vote, but he couldn’t be there for that. Clark looked at him, one last pleading look for him to stay before waving his hand for him and sitting down. There was a small murmur of confusion after he made his announcement. It followed him as he took his leave. 

-

The next morning Bruce walked into the kitchen still in his pajamas. He felt like he'd been run through a meat grinder. He’d been thinking about his argument with Clark and had been distracted. Some useless drug runners had doused him with some knock off Scarecrow fear gas they were using to escape cops almost as soon as he'd hit the streets. Instead of running, they’d ganged up on him. He’d managed to fight them off long enough to take the antidote, but he’d felt off the rest of the night and felt even worse this morning. 

Alfred set a cup of coffee in front of him. He propped his head on his hand and sipped at the coffee. It did little to soothe the pounding in his head, but it worked enough for him to realize that there were three people staring at him from the table. He wrapped his hands around his cup and stood. If he looked rough enough to put those looks on his son’s faces he didn’t need to go in to the office. 

“Will you call the office for me?” Alfred nodded and told him he would bring his breakfast up once it was ready. He laid back down carefully once he was back up in his room. The ache in his back was a little sharper, and he counted the seconds until the pain eased. 

“You don't look so good,” Tim said as he placed the tray down on the bedside table. He jolted awake, his back twinging slightly. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep. 

“Rough night. Nothing to worry about. Did Damian get to school?” Tim nodded. He looked like he didn’t believe him, but wasn’t ready to push it yet. 

“Alfred is taking him now. He checked you out last night, right? I don’t know why I’m asking, of course he did.” Tim grinned. “I just wanted to let you know I won’t be back until tomorrow. I have to check in with Kon. Alfred just left, so if you need anything before he gets back… Dick is around. You need to stop avoiding him.” He grabbed the bowl of oatmeal from the tray without acknowledging his oldest. “Not that you ever listen to me,” Tim grumbled and stole his scone as he headed out. 

-

_ The air surrounding him was thick and coated his tongue with the taste of metal. Gunshots rang out. He covered his ears and ran. Shadows and vines pulled at his feet, he stumbled. His arms flailing free from his ears as he caught himself on the hard rock. He could hear the shrieks of animals and the beating of wings behind him. His heart thrummed wildly in his chest. It was getting harder to run, the vines dragging at his feet. He stumbled free of the vines and his feet splashed in something thick and dark, covering his shoes. He cried out for help, but his voice was drowned out by an echoing laughter that moved with the wind. His throat hurt as he screamed. The largest man he’d ever seen stepped from the shadows, his eyes glowed like a lightning bug as he watched him. He called for his mother as he crawled away over the sharp rock. A hand wrapped around his ankle. He screamed and pulled free. As he pushed to his feet, the ground caved in and he dropped into the bottom of a deep hole.  _

_ He gasped in air as he tried to catch his breath. The dirt below him moved, suddenly there were hands and arms reaching at him through the dirt. They pulled at his shirt and pants. He fought them and scrambled into the corner of the hole. A single hand wrapped around his throat from behind. He pulled away, but the hand held him tight. He cried and struggled to get free. The arm dropped off and he scrambled to get away.  _

_ When he turned to look at the wall he saw a boy, barely older than himself climbing through the dirt. He was wearing a red mask, it caught the light of the moon. The boy snarled and grabbed for him. He screamed and pushed against the arms reaching for him. As the boy crawled free from the wall, he heard someone calling to him.  _

_ He looked up and Alfred was standing on the edge of the hole with his arm extended to him. He reached for it, sobbing in relief.  _

Alfred was standing at his bedside. His first breath was more gasp than anything else. His hands were shaking as he rubbed them over his face. He reached for the glass of water on the side table, Alfred watched him carefully as he gulped down the cool liquid. 

“I’m okay now,” he mumbled. Alfred took the glass and stepped back. It was then that he noticed Dick standing in the doorway. He looked up at Alfred. The man just gazed back at him. 

“I'll go fetch your lunch,” Alfred said pointedly. Dick hesitated when Alfred passed him, but stepped in after taking a deep breath. 

“Are you sure that you're okay?” Dick asked. 

“It was just a dream,” he said instead of answering. 

“You wouldn't wake up. I didn't know what to do.” Dick’s hands fisted at his side. “I tired of not knowing what I'm supposed to do.”

“Your memories will come back,” he said as calmly as he could. With each passing day that Dick didn’t get any more of them back he started to worry. They had no idea what Jason had done to him in the time between the explosion and Dick’s first medical record. He looked over to Dick who was hugging himself and looking so much younger than he was. He needed to tell him about Jason. He couldn’t keep hiding this. “Dick, I need to tell you something.” 

“I know you despise my broccoli soup, but Master Dick requested it for dinner last night.” Alfred set the tray down in front of him. “I brought you a bowl as well.” Dick shook his head. 

“Thank you, but I have lunch plans with Barbara. Helena should be picking me up soon.” Dick took a step toward the door and hesitated. “I’ll, uh… come check on you when I get back.”

\---

Dick watched Bruce. He watched him as he walked down the stairs, searched through books and as he left for the office every few days. He watched him and the boys as they got ready for patrol, always from the shadows where he knew they wouldn't find him and he always turned away before he could don his cowl. He watched the way that Bruce interacted with Damian, every touch careful like he was afraid he could break their bond if he pushed him to hard. And how he spoke to Tim, like a partner more than a son. And how he… was. 

Dick still hadn't remembered the things that he lost. The idea was there, the names and the sentiment- but that was all. And it was confusing to know how he should feel without knowing why. 

He sat on the mantel that was above the front doors, in front of the window that looked out on the vast entry way that lead to the front gates. Bruce was talking with Tim, walking a few paces behind Damian where he ran ahead with Titus. And Dick knew that he loved Bruce. He knew that. He could feel the tightness in his chest as the small twitch of his mouth that was as close as he got to a smile spread across his face. But he also knew that there was something else. A distance between them that he couldn't place. 

He tried to imagine being unhappy there. He was sure that he missed his parents but other than that, he just couldn't figure out why he would leave so willingly. Why had he and Bruce ended their partnership? 

He waited for the family to start their patrol before he called Wally. He answered before the first ring even finished. “Finally,” he groaned. “I was starting to think that you forgot me again.”

“I tried to.” Dick grinned but it was short lived, “Listen Wally, I have a favor.”

“Shoot.”

“I need you and J’onn to come over. Now before Bruce and the boys get back from patrol.” He told him. 

He could feel Wally hesitate on the other line. “Are you sure that's a good idea?” he asked. 

“No,” he admitted. Bruce didn't want J’onn to tap into his mind again. He had heard him telling this to Alfred before he walked into the kitchen a few mornings ago. “ _ It isn't worth it. I don't want him to feel that kind of pain again. His memories were coming back on their own before, they'll keep coming. He just needs more time _ .” But Dick did not have more time. Every day that went by he could feel it getting harder to pull at the frayed edges of what he was missing. Faces were blurrier and memories were harder to touch. He knew that it was stupid, but Dick was scared that if he didn't get them back soon- he wouldn't get them back at all. He would feel himself burn a thousand times to remember who he was for a second. “But is doesn't matter. I need this.” 

“We can be there in ten minutes.” Wally promised him. 

They made it in nine. J’onn was in his human form, a well pressed suit decorating his built form and Wally was in sweats looking like he ran a mile. “Is Alfred in the kitchen?” he asked. “I’m starving.” Dick nodded at him and pointed him down the hall, leaving him alone with J’onn. 

“You are nervous,” the telepath said and raised an eyebrow at him. “Bruce doesn't know I'm here.” 

Dick shook his head. “I don't want an audience,” he told him and cleared his throat. “And I don't want to stop this time.” 

J’onn nodded and motioned to the sitting room. “Let's start then.” 

Dick sat tapping his fingers on the arms of the chair, nodding that he was ready before J’onn could ask. “I would like you to close your eyes,” he said in an easy voice and Dick obeyed. “I will not be asking questions this time. I just want you to think. Think about the things that you want to know.  Think about your life.” And then he was under. It was so much faster this time making Dick wonder if the was of the last one had been for show, for Bruce's benefit. 

“ _ Trust no one _ .” the memory hit him like a ton of bricks. They were in Metropolis and Clark had just helped them take down Blockbuster. Dick had been in awe but Bruce was wary. He had always been wary of Clark but Dick had practically worshiped him- so much so that he remember Bruce shouting at him the first time he jumped off a building without his grappling hook, “ _ You  _ can't _ fly _ !” He had screamed at him half dressed in the cave. But Dick didn't think too much about it. Of course he could fly. He was a Grayson.

They had done so many things together. They fought impossible battles and went to functions and Bruce protected him when people pointed- called him a gypsy boy, used all the words that his mother hated as they mocked the ward of Bruce Wayne. The poor circus boy who became the heir to a fortune, son of Gotham’s most prominent member of society-

But Dick was never Bruce's son. “ _ You're not my father! _ ” he had screamed at him too many times to count before he’d run up to the roof or sit on top of a bookcase, needing higher ground to think and to watch Bruce as he wound down. He wasn't his father. And Dick was happy for it. If Bruce had been his father then these feelings… 

He got away as soon as he could, and Bruce practically pushed him out the door. He told Dick that he didn't need him anymore, he worked better alone and all their time together had been for Dick’s benefit. But as soon as he left there was another Robin. Jason. Jason was… he felt the fire start to burn if his skin again but he steered away from it, pushing back to the boy in his suit, angry and scared who had the biggest smile he had ever seen when he let it go. Another memory flashed in front of him, him and Jason on the trapeze, laughing and terrified as Dick pushed him off and met him at the other side, gripping his hands. “ _ Let go _ .” He told him and Jason shook his head hard, knees locked on his bar. “ _ You let go or I will,” _ Dick promised and Jason held his breath before he let go. 

Jason had been… his brother.  His friend. His biggest heartache after the building collapse, and ultimately, the thing that destroyed him and Bruce. Dick had tried to be there for him. He tried to console him and help him through the loss but he wouldn't listen and he didn't want to see him. He kept shutting him out- telling Alfred that he wasn't  home when he came by until he just never was. It wasn't until Tim came to him, clad in his old colors that he even knew that Bruce was still in Gotham. 

There were years of this- of finding and running from each other- years telling himself that he didn't need to have Bruce, he had Kori and Barbara and Helena and… the list was longer than he was proud of. There were more fights than there was anything else. But even having those fights, he would rather have those fights than not have Bruce at all. 

He was sweating when J’onn backed off of him, sweating and shaking and Wally was looking at him with wide eyes. “Dick?” he asked slowly like he was looking at a new person. But he was. He was… him. 

He stood up just as slowly and looked around him at his childhood home, it was still his home. The place where he had become a man and the city that had built him. “You should lay down,” J’onn told him. “Your mind will he very active for a few hours. You need rest.” 

-

He woke up before the sun did and took his time as he got dressed, going through the trunk of clothes he'd left when he'd set out on his new life. A Haly’s shirt that Tim had found at an old thrift shop on the peer, so worn that he'd put a hole in both armpits. Bruce had told him to throw it away a dozen times but Dick loved it. And it used to make him laugh when he raised his hand to answer questions Bruce had asked anyone but him and caught a glimpse of that stupid hole. He pulled on his jeans and the jacket that Bruce had forced him to buy and stopped to look at himself in the bathroom mirror before he left. 

He looked older. It was as if he had aged the two years he'd been gone in the span of a day. His mind feeling clearer than it had since the accident even though his body could feel the dim ache of his wounds like they had just healed. But he forced himself not to look at the scars. He wasn't ready to  _ really _ see them yet. 

He walked out of the first room and headed up the stairs to the small room off the attic and pushed it open, spilling out the posters and do-dads of his childhood. He couldn't help the small smile at the circus poster tacked to the wall, a photo of him on the high wire grinning at the camera. He shut the door not wanting to go any further. He knew what was in there. He didn't need it. Not right now.

It was a Wednesday so he went to the coffee shop and waited. Just like clockwork, Bruce came in at seven and approached the counter with the same bored look. Dick gave him a minute, sitting back and watching him with new eyes trying to remember just how many times he had done this, trying to decipher the mystery of Bruce Wayne. The mystery that he had been a part of for most of his life. Dick waited and Bruce found him like he always did. Dick waved awkwardly and kicked out the chair across from him. 

Bruce walked over suspiciously but he sat down in front of him anyway, fiddling with his coffee. “It's been a few weeks since we did this.” Bruce noted.

“I feel very clear headed today,” he told him and Bruce raised an eyebrow. “I was actually hoping you would go somewhere with me tonight,” he asked. “Just us.”

Bruce watched him carefully, chewing in all of his options. “Okay,” he finally said. 

Dick nodded and swirled a spoon through his coffee. “Okay,”he agreed. 

-

They walked slowly along the pier, it was late and all of the lights had already gone off with their timer. Neither of them minded though, they were both very comfortable in the dark. They hadn't spoken much since they left the manor and Dick was grateful for that. He needed time. Time to figure out what he wanted to say and how he should say it. “Where are we going?” Bruce finally asked when they got to the end. 

Dick waved to the circus tent that was left in the right corner. “Higher ground.” He told him and opened the flap. The trapeze was still set up with a net underneath it. The climbed the ladder on the poles up and sat on the platform staring down at Bruce who was watching in half amusement. “You know, I took Jason here.” He called down to him before standing up and stepping out onto the wire, “After he became Robin.” He didn't look down but he knew that Bruce would be surprised to hear it. He'd never told him but he also wasn't supposed to remember that. “He was mad at you for leaving him behind after a bad mission where he didn't follow orders and almost got himself killed.” He sat down on the wire and watched Bruce who was looking at him like he wasn't sure what he was feeling, like he was watching an old movie he'd forgotten about. “He hated it. Told me it was stupid, but after a while I think he had fun. Not that he told me he did.” 

He let Bruce digest that for minute and then nodded towards the platform and Bruce slowly moved towards the pole and climbed up. Dick stood and walked back towards him. “I lied to you when I told you why I was leaving,” he told him standing just off the platform. He had to get this off his chest and he knew that it would be easier if he stayed just out of reach. “But you lied to me too. And I want to tell you something, I've wanted to for a long time but I didn't know how to before.” Bruce nodded slowly and Dick took another step towards the platform. “Kori wasn't my first love.” He told him swallowing hard. “Bruce, I left because I was so fucking in love with you that I couldn't stand there and pretend to be your kid anymore.”

-

Something felt different as they walked along the pier. He couldn't explain the feeling, but it was there in the back of his mind the entire time. He watched Dick climb to the tightrope. His eyes locked on him as soon as he stepped out onto it. He could barely hear was he was yelling down at him. He told a story about a simpler time, an easier time. A time when all they had to worry about was making sure that they made it home each night. He motioned for him to join him on the platform and he did. Bruce had never been the biggest fan of the circus. It didn't bring the best memories, but he knew that Dick had been happy with Haly’s. There were times when he wondered if he wouldn't have been happier if Dick stayed with them. He felt the thrum of nerves under his skin. Dick was so intent as he watched him step up to the edge of the platform. He was still a few steps away, balancing with ease as he waited. 

Two things registered in quick succession: Dick had gotten his memories back, and he had said  _ was _ . His heart was heavy in his chest as Dick stepped back onto the platform. He wanted to pull back. He wanted to avoid the pain he knew would come as it always did, but Dick deserved better than that. He'd gone through hell and Bruce knew that he had to at least be honest with him. Even if this was the end. 

“You remembered?” he asked. He wanted the confirmation. This was one moment where he didn't want to risk being wrong. Dick nodded, his eyes searching his face. He couldn't help but think back to that first cup of coffee, what felt like a lifetime ago, when Dick had looked at him the same way - seeking answers. 

“Yeah. I remember everything. My parents, you, Alfred, the boys. I remember the last 20 years, the last 2 years, the last two months. I remember all of it. Bruce…” Dick's voice went soft. “I'm sor-” 

“Don't,” Dick paused, his eyes widening slightly at the interruption. “Don't say you're sorry. None of this is your fault.” He balled his hands into fists to keep from reaching out for Dick. He wanted to pull him in and just hold him. Hold him until he was sure that he was really there, but Dick's words echoed in his head. Those were the feelings of an eighteen year old boy. He couldn't let himself hope that there might be something of them still there in the man standing in front of him at the top of a circus tent. “I'm the one who should apologize.

“I'm sorry that I put so much pressure on you. I never wanted you to feel like you had to hide things from me. I should have listened to you when you left.” His words caught in his throat. He cleared it and continued, “I am sorry that I wasn't there for you when Jason died. I was too caught up in my own pain, my failure, that I didn't think that you might have blamed yourself. I didn't realize that you'd lost your brother. I know how destructive it can be to be alone in your grief.

“I forget sometimes-” He looked at Dick. “There are times that I look at you and see  _ The Boy Wonder _ . I forget that your smile can be as much a mask as the one I wear. 

“I love you, Dick. That will never change, even if you don't feel the same. You brought joy back into my life. I'm sorry that I've never been able to do that for you.”

Dick watched him for a long minute, a minute that could have lasted a lifetime with a look that made Bruce want to pull the words back and bury them. 

“You were my net,” Dick said and stepped back out onto the wire. “You let me soar,” his hands raised gracefully above him, “and you're always there to catch me.” Dick took a few more careful steps back, but stayed within reach. “Right now there is so much going on in here. I am trying to balance who I was with who I am now. I have to find that balance. I know that I can, because I know that you'll be there to catch me if I stumble.” 

Bruce held out his hand and Dick took it with a hint of a smile. He pulled him back onto the platform. “Let's go home,” Dick said, looking up at him. 

“It is getting late,” he said and wiped at his face as he turned. Dick squeezed his hand before letting go to head to the ladder. 

-

“I'll get some at the office,” he said when Alfred asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee. Tim offered to cut Damian's pancakes as the boy coughed. Bruce pat Damian's back. “You're supposed to chew,” he told him. Damian growled and pushed his arm away. Bruce took the high five Tim offered. “Is Dick still asleep?” he asked. Dick had always been the first to wake up. 

“No. I was waiting on you.” Dick waved at the boys and told Alfred he'd get a car back. Tim shot him a calculating look but didn't say anything as Damian started complaining. 

“I can't believe that you don't have a regular order. What even is that?” Dick asked as they sat down. 

“Mocha Java Chip Frappuccino.” Dick just stared at him. 

“Who even are you?” he smirked as he took a sip of the drink. It felt like they'd gone back in time just a few weeks. Dick looked over to the counter. “She thought I'd been standing you up.” he glanced over to where their regular barista was talking to one of the other workers. “She told me last time how sad you'd looked when I wasn't there.”

“I-”

“You're different,” Dick told him. “I watch you with the boys and I don't think I've seen you like that since it was just us. Tim said you don't hide things from them?” Dick's voice sounded doubtful. He nodded. 

“I am trying. But there is something that you need to know. I’ve been trying to tell you,” he hesitated. He knew that he needed to tell Dick, but they were just starting to get back on good terms and he was worried this would ruin them. “But Jason is in the cave. We captured him when you didn't answer my call, when you were with the League.”

Dick’s blood ran cold and an unexpected panic at learning Jason’s whereabouts ran up his spine. “Oh.” was all he managed to get out for the next few minutes, feeling Bruce’s wary gaze on his face. Dick could tell that whatever reaction he was having, it wasn’t the one that Bruce had expected from him. But honestly Dick wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react. “He’s… alive?” he asked slowly when he got the feeling back in his legs. 

“Yes.” Bruce nodded with a heavy breath. “Sedated. But alive.” 

Disgust and discomfort ran through him, “You drugged him?” he demanded. 

“He drugged you,” Bruce pointed out, in the same clinical way he used to tell him unfortunate case facts when he had first become robin. Bruce’s default setting in full swing. “For months.” he added bitterly and mostly to himself. “He’s still conscious. Just weakened.”

Dick nodded having to take a minute to remind himself that Bruce wasn’t the bad guy in this situation. Jason was the bad guy. Jason had killed him. Jason had gotten himself into this mess and trained Dick to think that it was his job to get him out- but that didn’t actually mean that it was. “How long are you going to keep him there?” he asked. “What exactly is the long term plan here?” 

Bruce sighed, his shoulders dropping heavily as he leaned back into his chair, “I don’t know,” he admitted, sounding like he hated saying it- which of course Dick knew he did. Bruce didn’t  _ wing _ anything. That had always been Dick’s job. “The plan was to keep him until we figured out how to help you remember and now…” He frown and bit at his bottom lip, something that Dick payed way too close attention to. “Is it… horrible that I just can’t stand to think about putting him in Arkham?” 

Dick reached his hand out on the table, holding it palm up for Bruce in an offering. The man blinked at him for a moment before finally he slid his hand into Dick’s and he felt all of the tension ease out of him in an instant and pressed his lips together to keep down the smile that threatened its way into him at the most inappropriate time. “I think that it would be extremely unlike you if you  _ wanted _ him in Arkham.”

Bruce squeezed his hand, “What do you want?” 

Dick swallowed. What did he want? “I want to talk to him. I want to know why he didn’t just let me die. I need to know if there is any good left in him.” 

Bruce hardened again, nodding as he sat up but he didn’t let go of Dick’s hand. “Can you wait until I get home?” he asked him, Dick feeling for the first time maybe in his life that he was actually giving him the chance to say no. “I’d like to be there.” 

Dick nodded. “Sure,” he told him. They still had a lot of things to work on, but he was willing to take those first few steps back together. 

-

Waiting was hard. He spent most of the day helping Alfred with chores, wishing that Damian was out of school so they could have wasted a few hours at the arcade. He texted Wally about random things and his friend was more than willing to distract him no questions asked. 

But staying busy, even with everything that was going on in his mind made him feel like he was waking up over and over again. Dick couldn't help but feel a dread deep in his chest when he walked by the study, knowing that just under his feet Jason had been held for months in the holding room just waiting for him to stop by. 

Bruce got home around three and Dick let him take his time to unwind before they went down to the cave, his heart hammering with every step. How many times had he been in there with Jason just across the room? What would he have done if Bruce had told him sooner, before he remembered? A gas filled the room and was then filtered through the wall before he opened the door and found Jason lying in an almost peaceful way in the corner. He was in his suit but his holsters, helmet, and boots had been removed. Blood was dry under his nose that looked like it had been broken and reset recently. Dick’s heart immediately lurched and he had to fight himself not to rush over to him. Instead he closed the door and listened to the lock go off before he sat on the floor, legs crossed in front of him and waited. 

It didn't take long for the gas to wear off, and Jason woke groggily jumping when he realised that he wasn't alone. Fear only flashed across his face for the smallest moment before relief at seeing Dick hit him. Jason scrambled to his knees and reached out to him but dropped his hand before he made contact. The look on Dick’s face was all that Jason needed to know that he knew exactly who Jason was now. The ruse was over. “I wondered if you would ever come to see me,” he said after a minute. His voice sounded dry and rough. “I didn't think you would want to.”

Dick watched Jason, the way his mask on anger and bitterness took over his entire demeanor, stripping him of the man who had been kind and worried about him for nearly two years, who was his brother, who pulled his broken body out of a burning building that he himself had dropped on him. “Why did you do it, Jason?” Dick asked instead of responding to him. 

Jason rolled his eyes. “To hurt Bruce,” he said flatly. “I wanted to win.”

Dick shook his head. “I don't believe that. You wanted to kill me. You wanted me gone, so why did you come back for me.”

He sat as Jason glared at the wall for a full five minute of torturous silence. Jason sucked in a deep breath and coughed when the cool hair hit the dryness of his throat.  As the coughing stopped he said, “You screamed.” He shot a glare at Dick, like it was his fault for not laying down and dying. “When you were in the building, you were screaming for Bruce to come back and help you, to  _ save _ you,” he said disgusted. Silence washed over them. “I screamed too- when I was in the building,” he grumbled bitterly, “But no one came back for me.”

Dick throat tightened. “Jay…”

“Don't,” he told him. “I meant to kill you okay? I planned on it. I drugged you so you would shut up and I was going to shoot you and put you out of your misery and mine. I spent months manipulating you and lying to you and I fucking loved it. So don't feel sorry for me. It's annoying and I don't need it.” 

It took Dick a minute to clear the knot out of his throat. “You still didn't say why.” 

“Because you would have done it for me, okay? I let you get to me. It was a mistake,” Jason snapped at him. “Now will you go? I'd like to die alone in here.” 

It was hard for Dick to get up and walk out of the cell. His heart was heavy and his mind was a mess of good and bad memories with an angry little boy and the kind man who took him in only to have washed his mind free of the truth. Bruce was waiting at the door, locking it into place as soon as Dick was out. He looked at him with a question, the same one from earlier, the tiny step that he was taking towards Dick to show him things were different. “Tim should decide,” Dick said finally. “With Jason… it's just, I can’t.” 

-

Bruce took Tim down to the cave when he got back that evening as Damian ranted to Dick about the pointlessness of school. They didn't talk about the discussion when they came back up, they just moved past it trying to let the normality of the moment they walked back into sink it. They watched a movie that night. Something weird that Kon had let Tim borrow and they laughed as Dick made horrible puns at the expense of the main character. Damian acted like he hated it, but he curled into Dick’s side and fell asleep there before it was over. 

He woke up early the next day hanging off the side of Damian’s bed. He had tried to tuck him in last night but the boy clung onto his arm and he eventually gave up and settled there. He rolled off of the mattress silently and pushed out of the room right as Bruce walked by, already dressed for the office. He raised an eyebrow at him and Dick just shook his head and chuckled, running a hand through the mess of his hair. “Coffee?” he asked. 

\---

He woke up and stared at his ceiling. It had been a habit, even after Dick returned to keep adding the days to his internal calendar, but that morning he looked at the same swirls and patterns and didn’t feel the need. He got out of bed and got ready for the day. It felt strange, like stretching after sitting still for hours. He walked by the boy’s rooms as he did every morning to make sure that they were up for the day. Tim had thrown a pillow at him when he’d opened his door, but he’d heard him grumbling about movie marathons as he walked away. Dick was stepping out of Damian’s room when he walked up. Dick chuckled and asked him to coffee. 

He warned Alfred to check on Damian on their way out. Their normally quick stop for coffee lasted a few hours, and if he was late to a few of his morning meetings no one said anything. 

Alfred asked him if he would mind taking Damian to school the next day. It had been a few days since he'd spent any time outside of the cowl with him so he agreed. Dick was waiting with the keys by the door to the garage. Bruce listened to Damian relay the last month of school drama to Dick as they drove. 

On Monday Dick was already eating with the boys. Tim was talking about some old case from Dick's time with the Titans that had popped back up. He told Alfred he'd be back late. Dick slipped out of his chair and told Tim he'd look up his case files before rushing after Bruce. 

“You could have stayed,” Bruce told him as they were pulling on to the main road. 

“I really do need to look at my notes. I remember it, but I don't remember any details.” Dick shook his head when he caught the look Bruce gave him. “It was almost 10 years ago. I really just don't remember. Plus, I didn't want to miss one of our dates.” 

He smiled as they settled into the lull of the drive. After a few minutes, Dick fiddled with the radio until he found one of the morning shows they’d used to listen to when he had still been taking Dick to school. 

By Wednesday Dick was taking the car back and picking him up from work. They talked. Dick talked more, there was simply more of his life to share. Dick talked about the years that they had stubbornly been apart. He talked about his time with the Titans, about his years in Bludhaven, he talked about Diana and the museum. When Dick turned to him and asked ‘what about you?’ He told him about Tim, about Damian. He told him about his proudest moments, about the times when he thought he was finally getting it right. He talked about his fears and doubts. It was a particularly cold day when he told Dick about the two years that he'd been gone. They'd sat in the car on the side of the road as he told him everything. By the end of it the sun had dropped and it was dark around them. He felt raw, and shaky. It took him back to that day in the church foyer. He let out a shaky half laugh and looked over to Dick. 

Dick kissed him. It was over too quickly, but it left him breathless nonetheless. It felt like a promise, the smile on Dick's face as he pulled back onto the road even more so. 

-

“I do not know,” Damian said sounding unsure as he looked from Dick to him. “What is your favorite, Father?” 

“Bruce doesn't eat cake,” Tim said. 

“Then I-” 

“That's not true Tim. He ate the cake you baked for him.” Tim turned red as Damian's eyes lit up in a mischievous glee. 

“I don't know this story. When did you make him a cake?”

“Father's day,” Tim grumbled and shot Dick a betrayed look. He listened to them retell the story. He remembered it a little differently. Tim's father had passed away and he'd adopted Tim. It had been an awkward few months. They knew how to respond to each other as Batman and Robin, and Tim had been in his odd little family from almost day one, but it was taking some time for them to get used to this new dynamic. Not to mention he had no idea how to help Tim through his grief. He watched him, and listened to him, and tried to support him, but he didn't know if he was any help. 

Dick had shown up one weekend. He'd just pulled Tim down into the kitchen and told him they were making a cake- at least that was what Tim had told him. He'd gotten home from work and heard them in the kitchen. Alfred was sitting at the table supervising and answering Dick's questions and Tim was smiling. Bruce hadn't seen him really smile in months. Dick nudged Tim and said something and the boy laughed. He looked over to Dick who was smiling back. His heart had leapt into his throat. He hadn't realized how blind he'd been. As he watched them, he saw the boy he'd tried to save from repeating his mistakes merge into the man who stood tall against anything that came his way. The man that cared more than anyone he'd ever known, the man who once again was sharing a little of the light that he carried within him with someone in need just like he had all those years ago. 

Bruce knew then why he had pushed Dick away. He knew why he took Jason under his wing, just to prove that there wasn't something wrong with him. He loved this man, just as he'd loved him then. He just hadn't noticed what that feeling was until that moment that boy smiled sleepily up at him and leaned in. Dick didn't remember and Bruce never brought it up after it had happened, but he had known and refused to acknowledge that those feelings were there. He had hoped it would go away, but watching Dick and his son bake a cake while his surrogate father chuckled quietly at their troubles, Bruce knew it wasn't something that would ever go away. When Dick turned and saw him in the doorway and his smile faded from his face, he knew that it was something that he'd never let go beyond the walls of his own mind. 

“And so Tim placed this lopsided monstrosity in front of Bruce who is so gobsmacked. I swear he just stared at the cake for like five minutes.”

“Felt like forever to me,” Tim added. 

“Then he looks up at Tim.”

“I thought he was going to say I'd made a mistake, I mean I had misspelled Father's. Three words, and I misspell the most important one,” Tim said it like he knew Damian was going to rib him for years, but like he knew it was an important part of the story. 

“But he doesn't. Instead he says…” Dick added with a laugh. 

“ _ Thank you, son _ .” Tim said in the voice he liked to use when he was mocking the ‘Batman Voice’ that Bruce did not have, no matter how many times they told him he did. 

“It was so painfully awkward, and so Bruce.” Dick smiled at him. He smiled back and knew that he loved Dick, every and any version of him. 

“And he ate it.”

“Spice cake was my favorite as a kid,” he said, feeling like he needed to defend himself. “Though the icing was a little melted.” 

Tim shot Dick a look. “He wouldn't let it cool.” 

“Well you can make one for Damian for his birthday since you're such an expert,” Dick said with a bob of his head. 

-

“Burning the midnight oil, Mr. Wayne?” 

He looked up to see Dick leaning against his office door in a navy sweater and grey slacks that he'd never seen him wear before. The man practically lived in spandex, but he couldn't help but follow the line of his legs under the fabric. Dick was smirking at him, eyes sparkling when he finally tore his own away long enough to meet Dick’s.

“I think it's time you took me to dinner,” Dick said as he stepped in and picked up his jacket. “Come on, we'll never get a table anywhere this late.” He stood and closed out of his email. He'd only meant to check his inbox quickly before leaving for the day, but one of his department directors had sent a concern about a Lexcorp project that Wayne Enterprises was funding. He'd been digging through the data and had lost track of time. 

-

Dick told him about Alfred's trouble at the grocery store while they waited in line at this little pizza parlor a few blocks away from the tower. He was pretty sure he'd heard some of the guys in the IT department talking about it a few weeks ago. He hoped it was good, and Dick had seemed excited when the driver had dropped them off in front. 

“I swear, that lady was seconds from getting a shotgun pulled on her.” He shook his head and Dick laughed. “I don't know how, but Tim and I are sure that he always has one on his person at all times.” He let Dick order for them. Pizza had never really been his thing, but he knew Dick loved it. There used to be a ranked display of take out menus in the cave, and one whole board was devoted to the different pizza places. Dick handed him his plate and they settled at a corner booth. He looked around and looked at his plate for a few seconds before sliding back out and returning with the eyes of the person handing out the pizza at the counters on his back the entire way. He hadn't thought it was that strange of a request. It was Dick's turn to stare at him though as he cut the first piece from the slice. 

“What?” he asked. 

“I love you,” Dick said with a huff of a laugh. He set his fork down. “No. Wait. I didn't mean to say it like that.” Dick let out a slow breath before meeting his eyes. “I had this speech. It was terrible, but a lot better than blurting it out like an idiot because you eat everything with a fork. Can you use your hands just once? Alfred's not here.” 

“He might be, lurking in the shadows with that shotgun.” 

Dick scoffed. “Eat the pizza. For me?” Dick bat his eyes up at him. He knew it should look ridiculous, but he just nodded and picked up the slice. Dick mimed folding it in half and he did as he was directed and took his bite. The cheese slid off and he caught it with his fingers before it could fall on his shirt. Dick watched him stuff the strings of cheese into his mouth with a smile. 

“It's a terrible idea,” Dick said. 

“You are the one that told me to eat it like-” He said with a frown and set the pizza back down. 

“Not the pizza. Us. So much has changed. I've changed.”

“Dick. I've been listening during our conversations. I know who you are, now and then. I know it won't be easy, because I know us. I'm going to piss you off. We're going to fight. It's what we do. But when I think about the future I think about spending it with you. Fighting, making up, and just being with you.” Dick was quiet for a few minutes. He cut off a piece of his pizza. The cheese fiasco was enough to have him going back to the way he'd been taught. 

“So, we're dating?” Dick asked, amusement in his voice. 

“I think we've been dating. But yes, if you agree, we're dating.” 

“Am I your boyfriend? Significant other? Lover?” Dick asked with a wink on the last one. 

Bruce grinned. “You're my partner.” 

-

He walked into his office, still floating a little from his morning coffee with Dick to Lex sitting at his desk. He had his feet up on it and was spinning a batarang between his pointer fingers. He stepped in and let the door shut behind him. 

“I didn't know we had a meeting today,” he said as he set his jacket down on the back of one of his chairs. 

Lex watched him, eyes cold and calculating as it followed the slow turn of the batarang, mirroring the churn of Bruce’s stomach. “It takes a lot for me to feel like a stupid man. Because I am not a stupid man.” Lex paused and then shook his head. “But you've made me feel stupid,” he accused. “It's been right there this whole time. I should have seen it.” He twirled the batarang again. 

Bruce tried not to look at it, but he wasn't sure what the man was going to do next. Part of him wanted to press the button that would alert security to come up, but it was under his desk, and he knew that this was a conversation they needed to have alone. He held onto his innocence, raising an eyebrow and breathing out a humorous breath through his nose that he matched with a confused half smile and shake of his head. “Lex, what are you-”

“I had to have the evidence laid out before me like some idiotic jury.” He kept talking as if he hadn't been interrupted. “Bruce Wayne himself, airhead buffoon running one of the most profitable businesses in the world. I had credited that to the management your father set up. But it's you.

“The children.” Bruce’s heart jumped into his throat and he dropped the smile, knuckles going white as he gripped the back of the chair. “Bruce Wayne adopts an orphan child less than a month before that irritating bird starts following Batman out to fight crime. Little Dick Grayson grows up, leaves the nest, and another little bird is adopted and a new Robin joins in. But this Robin dies. His autopsy was a tough read, so many wounds for someone so young.” He bit back his reaction. Lex smiled though and he knew that he hadn't hidden it all. 

“But then another Robin comes along, no boys in the Wayne Household though, until that Robin's family dies and Bruce Wayne adopts young Timothy Drake. 

“And this,” he slammed the batarang into his desk. “A special metal created by Wayne Enterprises for industrial use. Funny that Batman was using it two years before it was released.” 

Lex knew. And Bruce knew that no matter how hard he denied it, that the information he had been given was enough to make him unswayable. But he tried anyway, putting his mask back on as he forced a humorless laugh. “You think that I'm Batman? Did the planet put you up to this?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “No more hiding for you. I know what you are. You can thank that Robin you let die, he was very enlightening. And very angry. I can't imagine why.” Lex smiled and stood. He put his hand on his shoulder as he reached him. “I'll see you around, Batman.” 

-

He texted the boys that they needed to talk as soon as possible once he'd gotten back to the manor. He'd left work as soon as Lex had exited the building. Alfred glanced up from his work as he passed him, but didn't say anything. Bruce was grateful, there were plans that he needed to get started. It was just a change. It had always been a possibility. He had known from the beginning that the name Bruce Wayne wasn't what really mattered, but at times he felt like it was all he had left of his parents. He slammed his hands down on the computer desk.

“Something upset you?” Bruce turned and a pistol slammed into the side of his head. He caught himself, but blinked at the double image of the figure before him. It was impossible, the alert should have gone out as soon as the door opened. 

“A little birdy spill all your secrets?” Jason mocked. 

Gunshots had always been louder than he expected. He'd covered his ears in pain after his father had been shot. The one that took his mother had drowned out his screaming. This one echoed around the cave. He dropped to the floor as his knee gave out, blood seeping through his ruined trousers. He looked up at Jason from one knee. 

“Why?” he demanded. Dick had asked the same question just a two weeks prior. Jason had answered him then, and he gave the same answer now. 

“To hurt you.” Jason kicked him when he tried to get back to his feet. He landed on his injured knee and his vision whited out with pain. Jason slammed the butt of the pistol on his hand when he reached for the emergency button. “No. I want to have you to myself for a little while.” Bruce reached for the gun and another gunshot went off, his ears ringing and his side flaring in pain. 

“Do you know what I realized when you chose those kids over Dick?” Jason waited for a moment. “You never cared about any of us. If you let your precious Golden Boy die then there was no point in trying to take any one else from you. Do you know what I figured out, the one thing you care about more than anything else?” Jason leaned down and looked him in the eyes. “Batman.”

“That's not true,” he said. 

Jason laughed. “Yes it is. You are nothing if you aren't Batman. I had planned to watch you struggle for a little while longer, but I think this game of ours has reached its end.” Jason stepped closer, gun pointed at his head. 

His heart dropped, Bruce would know Alfred's footsteps anywhere. His entire childhood he'd fallen asleep to the tired steps and woken up to their brisk counterparts. He could hear them coming closer as Jason took a breath, preparing to pull the trigger. He reached for the gun. 

“Mast-” The gun went off. He looked behind him and saw Alfred stumble back against a gear cart. He slid down to the ground, there was already blood covering his fingers as he held his side. Jason looked horrified when he turned back to him, the gun was pointed to the floor but as soon as he moved it was trained back on him. 

“This is your fault. All of this is your fault. You should have saved me. You should have saved Dick.” Jason looked behind him to where Alfred was struggling to breathe. “I wanted you to die alone, so you'd know how it feels. But I guess that's not happening.”

The gunshot echoed in the room, it ripped through his chest. He fell back, his injured leg twisting underneath him, it hurt, but so much of him hurt. Jason ran. He watched his stuttering first footsteps quicken until he was sprinting up the stairs. 

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said. He turned his head to see the elder man trying to stand.

“Don't move,” he said shaking his head. Alfred settled back down. He dragged himself over to him. He pressed harder against the wound on his side. “You'll be fine,” he managed with a single cough. “The boys are coming.” Alfred touched his hair. His vision faded in and out. He blinked and tried to focus. 

“As will you,” Alfred told him. He wanted to believe him. He had always wanted to believe him. When he'd held him after his parents’ deaths and told him that his life had not ended, he'd wanted to believe him. When he'd told him that he was doing the right thing taking in Dick, he'd wanted to believe him. After Jason… 

It was getting harder to breathe. 

“Tell them I'm sorry,” he said and closed his eyes. They were too heavy, he just needed to rest a moment. Alfred's voice changed as he told him to open his eyes. He sounded upset, but Alfred was never upset. 

-

“We have to move them. Upstairs, stage a robbery,” Tim's voice was calm as his awareness returned like he'd just surfaced from under water. 

“Do you think moving them is safe?” Dick asked. He turned his head toward the voice and felt Dick's hand on his face. 

“It must be done Master Dick. He needs a hospital.” Alfred's voice was weak, he didn't like it. They needed to get him help. He tried to tell them, but it took too much effort. 

-

“I'm not leaving him,” Dick shouted. 

“You can't be up here. You're dead Dick. Damian will ride with him, we'll keep you updated.” He blinked and looked up into the blinding lights of his office. There was a cool breeze coming from somewhere. It was too cold. He needed to close the window. He didn't know why Alfred had opened it. 

“Shh shh. Stay still. The ambulance is almost here.” Dick leaned over him. He could hear the sirens echoing in through the open window. He looked up into Dick's eyes. “They're going to patch you up and we're going to have that future we talked about ok?” he gripped Dick's fingers. 

It was too bright. 

“Bruce? Bruce!” 

-

“You are stronger than this, Father. Please,” Damian's voice cracked. He groaned as the ambulance hit a pothole and everything jerked. 

Damian was crying. He moved his hand, wanting to wipe the tears away like his mother had done for him when he was a boy, but the straps stopped his movement. Damian grabbed his hand though. “Fight,” Damian whispered and squeezed his fingers. 

He looked up at his youngest and squeezed them back. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeeey, so-
> 
> Originally this was our NANORWIMO fic. We wrote chapters 1 through 4 in November, but hated the original chapter 5. We are sorry for the wait, but are also much happier with the ending going into our next fic (which we hope you'll read!). 
> 
> This Dick's total is based off the song All Who Remain by Heart of Darkness. It is beautiful and depressing- so if the end of this isn't hurtful enough, please look it up.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and if you enjoy this series then force your friends to read it as well. 
> 
> Love and butt stuff
> 
> -Prubs


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